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Why climate rap actually improves the dreaded school assembly

by JoellenPr Posted on October 29, 2014

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Why climate rap actually improves the dreaded school assembly

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29 Oct 2014 5:07 PM

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Why climate rap actually improves the dreaded school assembly

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Grist wrote about the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) and its upbeat school presentations back in 2009, just after the program got rolling in a handful of San Francisco Bay Area high schools. The “ACE Assembly” revamps the deadly school assembly — and a deadly topic like climate change — with animation, music, and freestyle rapping to inspire students to get up and do something.

Since then, the program has spread all over the country and reached almost 2 million students. And it just got major accolades: A study published in the academic journal Climatic Change found, after surveying 2,847 students in 49 high schools, that this kind of thing works (… well, if you can measure “engagement” in hard numbers). A before-and-after survey found some impressive changes:

– Students demonstrated a 27 percent increase in climate science knowledge.

– More than one-third of students (38 percent) became more engaged on the issue of climate change.

– The number of students who talked to parents or peers about climate change more than doubled.

Mostly, though, the research underscores something teachers have known for a lonnngggg time: Make learning fun, and it’ll stick. “Exposure to climate science in an engaging edutainment format,” the researchers claim, “changes youths’ knowledge, beliefs, involvement, and behavior positively.”

I’d venture to guess that educating anybody, at any age, could fall under that rubric. There’s a reason why the adults at Grist love depressing yet adorable animations and raps about Monsanto. Just sayin’.

Source:
New Study: The ACE Program Works

, Alliance for Climate Education.

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Why climate rap actually improves the dreaded school assembly

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Talk, Talk, Talk to Your Kids

by AlfredoParnell Posted on October 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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I’ve long been sort of interested in the ongoing research that shows the importance of building vocabulary in children. This is famously summarized as the “30 million word gap,” thanks to findings that high-income children have heard 30 million more words than low-income children by age 3. But apparently new research is modifying these findings somewhat. It turns out that quality may be more important than quantity:

A study presented on Thursday at a White House conference on “bridging the word gap” found that among 2-year-olds from low-income families, quality interactions involving words — the use of shared symbols (“Look, a dog!”); rituals (“Want a bottle after your bath?”); and conversational fluency (“Yes, that is a bus!”) — were a far better predictor of language skills at age 3 than any other factor, including the quantity of words a child heard.

….In a related finding, published in April, researchers who observed 11- and 14-month-old children in their homes found that the prevalence of one-on-one interactions and frequent use of parentese — the slow, high-pitched voice commonly used for talking to babies — were reliable predictors of language ability at age 2. The total number of words had no correlation with future ability.

In practice, talking more usually leads to talking better, so there’s probably a little less here than meets the eye. Still, it’s interesting stuff. Regardless of parental education level, it turns out that simply interacting with your newborn more frequently and more conversationally makes a big difference. So forget the baby Mozart, all you new parents. Instead, just chatter away with your kids. It’s cheaper and it works better.

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Talk, Talk, Talk to Your Kids

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Republicans Are Far More Critical of American Schools Than Democrats

by LeilaniOgden Posted on October 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Over at Vox, Libby Nelson interviews Jack Schneider, a history professor at College of the Holy Cross, about why Americans think schools are in decline despite the evidence that they’re actually better than they used to be. Here’s Schneider:

The first reason that people think schools are in decline is because they hear it all the time. If you hear something often enough, it becomes received wisdom, even if you can’t identify the source. That rhetoric is coming from a policy machine where savvy policy leaders have figured out that the way that you get momentum is to scare the hell out of people. So reformers have gotten really good at this sky is falling rhetoric….The rhetoric there is the schools are in crisis, we are competing against nations that are going to somehow destroy us if our test scores aren’t high enough, and lo and behold, policymakers have a solution.

Schneider points to a couple of pieces of evidence to back up his contention that schools today are better than in the past. The first is NAEP test scores, which have been generally rising, not falling, over the past few decades. The second is the well-known fact that people tend to think their own neighborhood schools are fine but that schools nationally are terrible. A Gallup/PDK poll confirms this perception gap.

But here’s an interesting thing. Although it’s true that this gap in perceptions is widespread, it’s far more widespread among Republicans than Democrats. Take a look at the chart on the right, constructed from the poll numbers. When it comes to rating local schools, there’s barely any difference between Democrats and Republicans. Only a small number give their local schools a poor grade. But nationally it’s a whole different story. Republicans are far more likely to rate schools as disaster areas nationally.

I’m reluctant to draw too many conclusions about this without giving it some serious thought. Still, there’s at least one thing we can say. This difference doesn’t seem to arise from different personal perceptions of education. Both groups have similar perceptions of their own schools.1 So why are Republicans so much more likely to think that other schools are terrible? If it doesn’t come from personal experience, then the most likely culprit is the media, which suggests that conservative media does far more scaremongering about education than liberal or mainstream media. That’s pretty unsettling given the fact that, as near as I can tell, the mainstream media is almost unrelentingly hostile toward education.

But the truth is that I don’t watch enough Fox or listen to enough Limbaugh to really know how they treat education. Is this where the partisan divide comes from? Or is it from Christian Right newsletter circuit? Or the home school lobby? Or what?

In any case, there’s more interesting stuff at the link, and Neerav Kingsland has a response here, including the basic NAEP data that shows steadily positive trends in American education since 1971.

1Or so it seems. One other possibility is that far more Republicans than Democrats send their kids to private schools. They rate these schools highly when Gallup asks, but rate other schools poorly because those are the schools they pulled their kids out of. A more detailed dive into the poll numbers might shed some light on this.

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Republicans Are Far More Critical of American Schools Than Democrats

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Could This Be the Senate Race Where the Koch Brothers Meet Their Match?

by JanTearlelwk Posted on October 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Republicans’ most likely path to retaking the Senate in November requires GOPers to pick up seats in six key states: Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Of the six, Alaska—where Democratic Sen. Mark Begich is facing off against former Republican Attorney General Dan Sullivan—may be the closest race. That’s why right-wing groups backed by the likes of the Koch brothers and Karl Rove are dumping millions into the state—and why Alaska unions are pulling out all the stops this year to make sure Begich, a fierce supporter of labor, carries the day.

“This is literally the most active we’ve ever been in an election cycle,” says Vince Beltrami, the president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, which represents nearly all unions in the state.

Union members have been working the phones, pushing out mailings, and canvassing on behalf of Begich. Volunteers have even taken the unusual step of door-knocking in areas far outside of Alaska’s urban centers, says Jerry McBeath, a professor of political science at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Because of the unprecedented level of campaign action this year, Beltrami says, the AFL-CIO had to rent out an extra 7,000-square-foot warehouse.

In addition to boots-on-the-ground support for Begich, unions are also throwing down for TV ads to help ensure the freshman senator gets a second term in office. The political action committee affiliated with the International Association of Fire Fighters, for example, recently spent $165,000 on TV ads against Sullivan. The National Education Association’s super-PAC unveiled an ad in early September slamming Sullivan for a misleading claim he made about going after a Wall Street firm that gave the state bad financial advice and cost the public pension fund billions of dollars. Around the same time, four statewide unions—Alaska Professional Fire Fighters, Alaska Public Employees Association, Alaska State Employees Association, and National Education Association-Alaska—held a press conference in midtown Anchorage to respond to the same disingenuous ad.

Labor unions are some of the top contributors to Senate Majority PAC, the organization that provides most of the funding for Put Alaska First, the political action committee that backs Begich and has run a majority of commercials supporting him.

Begich has a solid pro-labor track record. Since his election to the Senate in 2009, he has backed legislation that would give collective bargaining rights to public safety officers, cosponsored the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to organize for better wages and benefits, and voted against a bill that would have banned Transportation Security Administration employees from collective bargaining. After Begich won his Senate race in November 2008, he delayed his resignation as mayor of Anchorage to oversee the signing of generous five-year contracts with unions representing municipal workers, firefighters, electrical workers, and cops. One out of every four Alaskans is either in a union or has a family member in a union. The state has the second-highest union membership rate in the country.

The giant push by labor this year comes not only because the race is one of the most competitive in the country and could decide which party controls the Senate. The wave of union action is also a backlash against the onslaught of money pouring into the state in support of Sullivan from the billionaire Koch brothers’ dark-money group Americans for Prosperity and GOP operative Karl Rove’s super-PAC, American Crossroads. The groups—which support the rollback of collective bargaining rights and back right-to-work laws, which prevent unions from compelling employees to join or pay dues to a union—are dumping money into the Alaska Senate race for the first time ever.

“They’re up here on the airwaves 24 hours a day, seven days a week, trying to tie Mark to Obama,” Beltrami says. “They say things 50 times a day on the airwaves that aren’t true. You gotta push back.”

Unions have a unique edge when it comes to pushing back, McBeath explains. He says unions could swing this election in Begich’s favor because the amount of outside money flowing in means “the airwaves are almost bought out, and other means of campaigning—like door-to-door—are more important than they would be in a typical Senate race.”

Begich has raised a total of $8.4 million so far and has spent $6.4 million. Sullivan has raised $4 million, of which he has spent about $3 million.

It makes sense that the unions are going no-holds-barred to make sure Begich wins in November. It’ll be rough going all the way though—in part because not all rank-and-file members will fall in line with union leadership at the polls, says Carl Shepro, a former political science professor at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. “There are so many conservative voters in Alaska,” he says. Even if they’re part of a union, “that doesn’t mean that they’ll vote liberal.”

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Could This Be the Senate Race Where the Koch Brothers Meet Their Match?

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Texas’ New Public School Textbooks Promote Climate Change Denial and Downplay Segregation

by ShaylaAlfred Posted on September 17, 2014

Mother Jones

The battle over Texas textbooks is raging once again. On Tuesday, hundreds of citizens turned out for the first public hearing on the controversial social-science materials now under review as part of the state’s contentious once-in-a-decade textbook adoption process. During the all-day proceedings, activists and historians pointed out numerous factual errors and complained that the books promoted tea party ideology while mocking affirmative action and downplaying the science linking human activity to climate change. “They are full of biases that are either outside the established mainstream scholarship, or just plain wrong,” Jacqueline Jones, who chairs the history department at the University of Texas-Austin, said from the podium. “It can lead to a great deal of confusion in the reader.”

Other speakers raised concerns about the treatment of religion, especially the tendency of some books to play up the role of Christianity in our nation’s founding. Kathleen Wellman, a professor of history Southern Methodist University, noted with dismay that a popular civics text was filled with references to Moses and claimed that the biblical prophet had inspired American democracy. If the draft texts are adopted as is, she argued, Texas children could grow up “believing that Moses was the first American.” Conservatives, meanwhile, complained that the books gave too much space to liberal figures such as Hillary Clinton.

It’s a high-stakes debate. Because Texas has one of the nation’s largest public school systems and some of the most rigid textbook requirements, publishers have traditionally tailored textbooks they sell nationwide to the Lone Star market.

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Texas’ New Public School Textbooks Promote Climate Change Denial and Downplay Segregation

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Controversial Former College President Mansplains Alleged Rape Victim

by PARTomaskgfaeb Posted on September 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Two weeks ago, Stephen Trachtenberg, the former president of George Washington University, made headlines when he appeared on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show to discuss sexual assault on college campuses and said that women had “to be trained not to drink in excess” so they could defend themselves against men who “misbehave.” Critics accused him of placing the burden on victims and equating sexual assault with misbehavior, claims that Trachtenberg contended did not represent his views.

In the midst of this controversy, a woman who says she was raped when she was a George Washington student in the early 2000s and was “extremely traumatized” by how the university handled her case confronted Trachtenberg via email to share her experience and denounce his remarks. In an email response, Trachtenberg, now a professor at the school, said her story “surely entitles you to your anger” and implored her to “tell me exactly what I said that you think I need to be ashamed of.” The exchange was obtained by Mother Jones.

Following the NPR show, the woman—who asked not to be named—emailed Trachtenberg about her case and said:

…Your recent remarks on the Diane Rehm show disgust me. Shame on you. Shame on the message that you have just sent to millions of women, millions of daughters, and millions of us survivors. I hope you can take the time to reflect on your statements and understand the impact of your words.

In interviews with Mother Jones, the woman recounted what happened to her. She said she was raped on campus by a fellow student, in the middle of the day, with no alcohol or drugs involved. She didn’t immediately report the assault, but after she began to experience depression and symptoms of PTSD, she decided to take a leave of absence. According to documents she provided to Mother Jones, a counselor recorded the account of her rape and an associate dean examined her records in order to approve the leave. “No one ever talked to me about my options,” she said. “No one suggested reporting to the police or going through the student judicial process.” Maralee Csellar, a George Washington spokeswoman, said she can’t comment on the case due to privacy laws.

After the woman returned to school, she filed a case against the alleged rapist with student judicial services. But she said she was not provided a victim’s advocate or any other support, and was “blindsided” by the legal defense mounted by the alleged assailant. She had an emotional breakdown and was unable to finish the trial. After that “extremely” traumatizing experience, she said she was not interested in going to the police.

Replying to the woman, Trachtenberg wrote:

Yours is a dramatic story of a dreadful experience and it surely entitles you to your anger. I like to think that today the university would serve you better. Your frustration with what happened seems sound. That said there are limitations to what the university can do. We can regret that but it cannot be denied. I believe that cases like yours need to be dealt with by the state. They have police and prosecutors and courts that have an expertise which exceeds that of the university. Rape by a student is no less rape than that by any other citizen and all need to be treated like crimes and adjudicated as such. My remarks on the Diane Rehm show are what they are. They do not define all that I think about the matter but they stand for a portion of my view that educating women–men too–about the dangers of drinking would make them safer. Being sober make one less vulnerable. And helps with driving too. Similarly I think it empowers women to know something about self defense if attacked. So go back and think about what I said beyond the strong memories of your personal experience and tell me exactly what I said that you think I need to be ashamed of. Educated empowered women strike me as a good idea.

In an email to Mother Jones, Trachtenberg—who noted that he does not speak on behalf of the university—writes, “This is a tragic story that seems to go back about a decade. I tried to be as responsive as I could to this abused woman when she wrote but to some agendas there is no reply.” He added, “My heart goes out to her.”

More than 75 schools are being investigated by the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to determine whether they botched sexual-assault investigations. George Washington is not one of those schools. Still, in January 2014, a victim complained to the student newspaper, the GW Hatchet, about the school’s response to her accusation of sexual assault, noting, “It was this constant battle with GW.” Csellar said that the university issued new sexual-violence policies last year and is “committed to fully supporting survivors of such acts and treating appropriately those who are found to have committed them.”

Trachtenberg insists that his original comments have been misconstrued and that he’s being unfairly maligned. “I thought I was speaking good and prudent truth on behalf of women when I was on the Diane Rehm Show,” he writes. “I said don’t blame the victims and I proposed two modest and hardly radical ideas.” He later adds, “Because my effort to candidly address part of a problem fell short of perfection and neglected to deal with all aspects of the rape culture agenda I was abused.”

“Look what happened to me, look at my case,” the woman told Mother Jones. “I’m sure this is happening to other people. With the attitude of people like this, whom we put our trust in, no wonder.”

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Controversial Former College President Mansplains Alleged Rape Victim

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Idaho Professor Accidentally Shoots Himself While Teaching Class

by EulahWhitten Posted on September 3, 2014

Mother Jones

Allowing college students and faculty to carry guns on campus makes everybody safer, right?

If you answered that the way the NRA does, then maybe consider what just happened at Idaho State University on Tuesday afternoon: A professor with a concealed carry permit was wounded when the gun he had in his pocket accidentally went off. According to local news outlet KIDK, the professor (who hasn’t been identified at this point) was in the middle of teaching class when he literally shot himself in the foot:

Around 4 p.m. Tuesday, Public Safety received a call about an accidental discharge of a concealed weapon in the Physical Science building. A student said the gun went off in the middle of the class.

Police said the small-caliber handgun was in the professor’s pants pocket and was not displayed at any time. They said the professor was able to leave of his own accord. He was treated and released from the hospital.

In March, Idaho Gov. Butch Otter signed a bill into law allowing permit holders to bring their guns onto public college and university campuses, despite polls showing overwhelming opposition from students and education leaders in the state. As the Idaho Statesman noted at the time, “Aside from perhaps agriculture, the NRA is the most powerful interest group in the Idaho Republican Party.”

How did a 9-year-old girl end up killing with an Uzi? And why did the NRA promote fun for kids with guns in the aftermath? See all of our latest coverage here, and our award-winning special reports.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2014/03/12/3076771_otter-signs-campus-guns-bill-into.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

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Idaho Professor Accidentally Shoots Himself While Teaching Class

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Ex-George Washington University President Responds to Controversy Over His Sexual Assault Remarks

by JorjaAoqqssn Posted on August 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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A former university president came under fire this week for the advice he gave on how to combat sexual assault on college campuses. On Tuesday, George Washington University President Emeritus Stephen Trachtenberg appeared on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show and said, “Without making the victims responsible for what happens, one of the groups that have to be trained not to drink in excess are women. They need to be in a position to punch the guys in the nose if they misbehave.” Critics pounced. Jezebel slammed his comments as “jaw-droppingly stupid,” and the website noted, “If this is the attitude freely and blithely expressed by a former University President, it’s no wonder that more than 75 schools are currently under investigation by the Department of Education for botching sexual assault investigations.”

The following day, Trachtenberg told the school newspaper, The GW Hatchet, that his remarks had been taken “out of context,” but he reiterated his main point: “What I’m saying is you want to have somebody you care about like your daughter, granddaughter or girlfriend to understand her limits because she will be less likely to be unable to fight off somebody who is attacking her.”

On Thursday, Mother Jones asked Trachtenberg to comment on the ongoing controversy, and he replied with a written statement. Regarding Jezebel, he said:

Jezebel has a world view that informs their prose. They are an advocate for an important cause and they take every opportunity to make their case. Sometimes in their enthusiasm they may get a little overheated. It’s hard to resist an apparent opportunity when you believe you are on the side of the angels.

In response to other questions—including why he chose to use the word “misbehave” to describe sexual assault—Trachtenberg said:

I chose that word because I was thinking and speaking quickly under time constraints on a radio show. Under different circumstances I might have used another perhaps stronger word. I am an educator. I believe in the power of education. I think that education about drinking and its effects on an individual can help protect that person from vulnerability. Knowledge makes one stronger. I also believe that having skills gives one power. If you know how to defend yourself you have strength that can be helpful in the event things turn physical. These two ideas are not meant to solve all problems. They are not blame shifters. They are what they are. Better to know things then not. No silver bullets here. We need to educate men too. Date rape is largely the responsibility of young men and alcohol and opportunity. We can address these issues as a community. Men and women and institutions together. Victims should do their best but they are victims and not to blame. My recommendation is to change the culture of the campus so that men and women protect and nurture each other as a family would. It will take work but it can be done.

Is this an apology? You be the judge.

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Ex-George Washington University President Responds to Controversy Over His Sexual Assault Remarks

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Compton to District Security Guards: Go Ahead, Bring Your AR-15s to School

by LeoStoweiqjph Posted on August 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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When students in the Compton Unified School District return to classrooms on Monday, some of them will have new pencils or notebooks. Their teachers will have new textbooks. But this year, the district’s campus police will be getting an upgrade, too: AR-15 assault rifles.

The board of the Los Angeles-area school district approved a measure to allow the campus cops to carry the new guns in July. The district’s police chief, William Wu, told the board that equipping school police with semi-automatic AR-15s is intended to ensure student safety.

“This is our objective—save lives, bottom line,” Wu told the board.

Crime is a serious problem in Compton, an independent jurisdiction south of downtown Los Angeles. In the 12 months preceding July, the city of nearly 100,000 experienced 28 murders, making it the 11th-deadliest neighborhood in the county, according to a data analysis by the Los Angeles Times.

But the choice to make Compton school police the latest local law enforcement agency to adopt military-style weapons was less about dealing with street crime than it was about preventing more exotic incidents like mass shootings. At the board meeting, Wu cited an FBI report released in January that found that 5 percent of “active shooters”— or shooters which are conducting an ongoing assault on a group of people—wore body armor, which can stop most bullets fired from handguns. To make his case, Wu cited a range of examples, including the Mumbai terrorist attacks and the University of Texas shooting in 1966, in which a student killed 16 people from the campus clock tower, out of range of police sidearms. (The student was eventually killed when a group of police climbed the tower and shot him at close range.)

“They will continue until they are stopped,” Wu said, at which point a board member interjected.

“No, they will continue until we stop them,” he said. “Compton Unified School Police…holding it down.”

“These rifles give us greater flexibility in dealing with a person with bad intent who comes onto any of our campuses,” Wu said in a statement. “The officers will keep the rifles in the trunks of their cars, unless they are needed.”

Compton is not the first district in the Southern California to allow AR-15s on its campuses. At the meeting, Wu said that Los Angeles, Baldwin Park, Santa Ana, Fontana, and San Bernardino all allow their officers to use the same weapons.

Compton school police last made news in May 2013, when a group of parents and students filed a suit against the department, alleging a pattern of racial profiling and abuse targeting Latino students. The complaint said that officers beat, pepper-sprayed, and put a chokehold on a bystander who was recording an arrest with his iPod. The group also claimed that Compton school police used excessive force against students and parents who complained that English-as-a-second-language programs were underfunded. (The case is ongoing.)

Wu said at the board meeting that seven officers have already been trained to use the new weapons. He said all officers would be purchasing their own weapons. The guns will be the officers’ personal property, but they could be bringing them to work as early as September.

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Compton to District Security Guards: Go Ahead, Bring Your AR-15s to School

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The Great Third-Pound Burger Ripoff

by EmmaJyylkepeom Posted on July 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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This is from a New York Times Magazine piece about America’s innumeracy problem:

One of the most vivid arithmetic failings displayed by Americans occurred in the early 1980s, when the A&W restaurant chain released a new hamburger to rival the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder. With a third-pound of beef, the A&W burger had more meat than the Quarter Pounder; in taste tests, customers preferred A&W’s burger. And it was less expensive. A lavish A&W television and radio marketing campaign cited these benefits. Yet instead of leaping at the great value, customers snubbed it.

Only when the company held customer focus groups did it become clear why. The Third Pounder presented the American public with a test in fractions. And we failed. Misunderstanding the value of one-third, customers believed they were being overcharged. Why, they asked the researchers, should they pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as they did for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald’s. The “4” in “¼,” larger than the “3” in “â…&#147;,” led them astray.

Are Americans really innumerate compared to other countries? Perhaps: Author Elizabeth Green says that American adults did pretty poorly in a 2012 international test of numeracy. The rest of her piece is all about how we could teach math better if we really put our minds to it, but unfortunately, after inventing all the best methods for teaching math we gave up, leaving it to the Japanese to perfect them. I don’t know whether or not this is a fair summary of the current state of play in math ed.

Still, the A&W anecdote was too good to check, and too good not to pass along. If it’s not true, it should be.

UPDATE: Elizabeth Green tweets that her source for this anecdote is Threshold Resistance by Alfred Taubman, who owned A&W in the 80s. Here’s the relevant passage, after Taubman has called in Yankelovich, Skelly and White to figure out what was wrong with their burger:

Well, it turned out that customers preferred the taste of our fresh beef over traditional fast-food hockey pucks. Hands down, we had a better product. But there was a serious problem. More than half of the participants in the Yankelovich focus groups questioned the price of our burger. “Why,” they asked, “should we pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as we do for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald’s? You’re overcharging us.” Honestly. People thought a third of a pound was less than a quarter of a pound. After all, three is less than four!

So there you go.

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The Great Third-Pound Burger Ripoff

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