skybrian's recent activity
-
Comment on Hobson v. Hansen and the decline of DC schools in ~humanities.history
-
Comment on Hobson v. Hansen and the decline of DC schools in ~humanities.history
skybrian Link ParentIt seems like a very well-researched article. I don’t trust the accusations of his enemies. Anti-rationalists say all sorts of things.It seems like a very well-researched article. I don’t trust the accusations of his enemies. Anti-rationalists say all sorts of things.
-
Comment on Hobson v. Hansen and the decline of DC schools in ~humanities.history
skybrian (edited )LinkBackground: the author is better known on the Internet by his alias, Tracing Woodgrains. Here's his post about co-founding Center for Educational Progress. From the article: ... ... ... ... ......Background: the author is better known on the Internet by his alias, Tracing Woodgrains. Here's his post about co-founding Center for Educational Progress.
From the article:
The Washington school system [Dr. Hansen] was headed for was very different from the Omaha system he left: a southern school system, strictly segregated since its creation and managed not by the local city but by a school board appointed by the federal judges (part-time non-specialist volunteers, in charge of setting the overall direction for the school system), a board-appointed superintendent (in charge of carrying out the day-to-day operations of the district in line with the board’s directions), and Congress itself (in charge of funding and apportionment). All clashed repeatedly over questions of control and direction. Since 1906, the Board had been mandated by law to contain a mix of six men and three women; by tradition from that point forward, two of the men and one of the women were black. The superintendent position was usually stable, with Hobart Corning—the superintendent when Dr. Hansen joined—serving for twelve years from 1946 to 1958 and his longest-serving predecessor Frank Ballou serving from 1920 through his retirement in 1943.
...
The District’s population was transforming by the time Hansen arrived. Its white enrollment had peaked at 59,500 in 1935, when the system had only 33,500 black students. By 1945, the white student population had declined to 50,000, while the black population had grown to 39,000. This led to repeated tensions in the system, particularly around assignment to schools: as white student populations shrunk and black populations grew, administrators would periodically close white schools and reopen them as black schools, as white students protested the loss of their schools while the black community protested the receipt of white hand-me-downs. By 1947, 45 percent of the district’s population was black, and 72 percent of its construction budget was going towards black schools, with numbers only increasing from there.
...
[T]he white and black schools tended to use various schemes to group students by ability. Most notable within the black system was its decision to run a single academic high school, Dunbar High, for the most academically driven black students from around the District, while sorting those who were less academically inclined into one of the District’s two other black high schools. The decision bore fruit, with the school drawing a highly educated faculty, preparing generations of black leaders, and standing as a national model for black excellence.
Into this system came Hansen, a committed liberal institutionalist who believed in the public schools as America’s most important social institution, a “traditional” educator at a time when traditionalism was already out of fashion, an integrationist and believer in colorblindness in a segregated world. Hansen believed that professional educators should be firmly in charge of schools with outside forces staying out. He championed basic, skills-focused education, ability grouping, and phonics for reading—something he noted had fallen out of favor in the 1920s as having become too highly technical and an end in itself before “revolutionists” rejected it instead of reforming it. When he was later made director of elementary schools, he immediately set about bringing phonics to the white schools that scorned it.
...
In what became known as the Corning Plan, the D.C. school district made several decisions: All schools would be desegregated as quickly and completely as possible, each one with new boundaries and the option for students to stay in their currently enrolled schools, school personnel would be appointed and promoted on the basis of merit, and the transition would be accomplished by natural and orderly means. In September 1954, D.C. students walked into integrated schools for the first time, with a smooth and uneventful first day.
...
The clearest tragedy during the early desegregation process was the administration’s decision to turn Dunbar High School, like the rest of the newly integrated high schools, into a local neighborhood school instead of the magnet school it had been. Dunbar teachers faced an uptick in learning and disciplinary problems in their classes, dwindling enrollments in advanced classes and a newfound need for remedial ones. As the Board debated its 1954 plan, it did not spare a thought for what would happen to Dunbar. The idea of preserving some of what made the school special went unmentioned and unconsidered, and so the school went from producing the highest number of black PhDs of any school in the country to being just another neighborhood school.
...
In 1960, Hansen saw the opportunity to put his elementary school ideals into action with the construction of a new school at the heart of a Southwest Washington urban development project. The Amidon School was to be his “put-up or shut-up operation,” a magnet school that would implement his ideal elementary school approach while inviting applications from around D.C. The focus of the Amidon was on teacher-directed, subject-matter-oriented instruction with demanding content, direct instruction, and difficult materials introduced early. Its reading instruction started young and kept phonics as its core, against the prevailing philosophy of education schools of its day. If his ideas fail when put to use, he said, he would abandon them. If they were effective, his staff would be willing to implement them more broadly.
...
During this timeframe, the greatest complication the administration faced was the rapidly shifting racial composition and rapidly growing population within the city and its schools. [...] School populations would turn over almost completely, with a few schools (like the District’s Eastern High School) going from 100 percent white to more than 90 percent black within a five-year span. Hansen noted that the tipping point seemed to be around 30 percent black, after which white flight almost always became rapid and near-complete.
...
Overall, the atmosphere between 1954 and 1962 was one of guarded optimism: real challenges, a top-to-bottom transformation of the District’s student body, but a general determination to make things work and in Hansen’s case an eagerness to implement his vision.
But towards the end of 1962, everything began to come crashing down.
...
By 1966, Hansen’s formerly iron-strong hold on the District’s school board collapsed with the appointment of three new board members who explicitly opposed him. Most notable was the appointment of John A. Sessions, a former Cornell English professor and an education specialist for the AFL-CIO union, whose interest in “education parks” and distaste for Hansen set the stage for the destruction of the Amidon School.
The argument went as follows: The Amidon School is high-performing and attracts some well-off students to its student body. Nearby Bowen and Syphax Elementary Schools are not. Therefore, we should combine them and make students from all three schools attend two years in each school, so that the well-off parents are inspired to help the other schools. Hansen proposed letting the schools decide; the Board shot him down.
...
Writing in 1970, the Washington Post’s prizewinning black journalist William Raspberry, considering the Tri-School Plan, called it an example of “hostage theory” in action. “The well-to-do parents would see to it that their children got a good education. All the poor parents had to do was see to it that their children were in the same classrooms. That was the theory. […] Now instead of one good and two bad schools, Southwest Washington has three bad ones.”
“We moved from Virginia into Washington to get our children into the Amidon,” one mother said. “The handful of agitators that proposed combining the Amidon with the two other elementary schools hit below the belt. One of them said on television that the people who objected didn’t want their children to go to school with Negroes. We came to southwest Washington to put our children in an integrated school. We came back to Washington because we wanted our kids to go to school with Negroes—and poor kids.” They left the school.
...
[In Hobson v. Hansen], Judge Wright concludes that while Hansen was “motivated by a desire to respond - according to his own philosophy - to an educational crisis in the District school system” rather than intended racial discrimination, the district’s ability grouping served as “a denial of equal educational opportunity to the poor and a majority of the Negroes79 attending school in the nation’s capital.” In other words, he asserts that while Hansen did not apparently intend to discriminate, the system’s disparate impact made it unconstitutional.80
Much of Judge Wright’s decision rests on his objections to tests, which he treats as intended to uncover “the maximum educational potential” of students. “One of the fundamental purposes of track theory,” he claims, “is that students’ potential can be determined.”81 He condemns the use of aptitude tests on low income black children, because “the impoverished circumstances that characterize the disadvantaged child” make it “virtually impossible to tell whether the test score reflects lack of ability—or simply lack of opportunity.”
...
As a result of all of this, he concludes that the effect of the track system is to unconstitutionally “deny a majority of District students their right to equal educational opportunity” and that it “simply must be abolished,” as must any system which “fails in fact to bring the great majority of children into the mainstream of public education.”
...
The Wright decision, then, stepped into an active and contentious dispute in the social sciences, misrepresenting the consensus of the fields while condemning as unconstitutional a pedagogical decision made on the basis of that same body of research without evidence of racial malice. As his core piece of evidence against the merit of testing and ability grouping, he used a study that used evidence of adults being tested, then learning well inside ability-grouped classrooms.
...
In the wake of the abolition of the track system, former basic track students (of which many were clinically mentally disabled) were simply placed in regular classes. The chairman of Parents United to Help the D.C. Mentally Retarded reached out first to Superintendent Manning, then to Julius Hobson, asking for help. He estimated 10,000 mentally disabled students in the district who had more intense needs than mere slow learners, with the district’s replacement for ability grouping, a pullout program for math and reading, being woefully insufficient. He warned that when those students try to compete in normal classroom situations, they “undergo ridicule, become frustrated and more withdrawn, develop severe emotional problems from being unable to compete, lose all confidence in themselves, and instead of making progress, recede in their learning ability.” Those children, he noted, “have been in effect abandoned for the next 1-5 years.” A mother, crying, told a reporter, “My daughter was doing well in her basic class last year. Now she comes home from school crying every day because she can’t keep up with the other children. I just don’t know what to do.”
...
Another blow hit District schools in 1970 with the toppling of Sidney Zevin, principal of the District’s last meaningfully integrated public high school. The first boycott Zevin faced was in September, 1954, when white students walked out of the junior high he taught at on the first day of desegregation. But in February 1970, it was no longer white segregationists boycotting him, but black militants. Chaos at the school had escalated—a biracial group of 35 radical teachers out of the 85-member faculty engaging in a prolonged power struggle with him, visits from the Black Panthers and Black United Front, an auditorium break-in with speeches calling for “revolution … by any means necessary,” daily false fire alarms, small fires set around the building, an unlit molotov cocktail in a second-floor classroom.
The school’s well-motivated black middle class had all but disappeared, with those who chose to come to Western from its open enrollment zone no longer allowed after Judge Wright’s decree. Classrooms contained students “from a third-grade reading level to the first year of college,” with pressure from critical teachers leading to near-total abandonment of ability grouping. The teacher who led the power struggle was a history teacher who spent his class periods showing Black Panther movies and, when the department head suggested some balance, a speech by the leader of the National Socialist White People’s Party. White parents at the school, when interviewed, said they wanted their kids to go to an integrated school, but not one where they felt resented and unwelcome.
...
What of the system as a whole by the 1990s? Even the thought of caring about student performance had become almost anachronistic by the ‘90s. Its student population peaked in 1970 before entering a precipitious decline, leaving it with far more schools than it needed after a massive building program. By the 1980s, the District spent more money per student than in every other major school system. By the time they were considering closing Banneker, the city’s student population had dropped 50,000 from its peak while central office positions doubled and the District’s per-student budget swelled, with the superintendent at the time unsure even how many employees he had. Ever since Hansen’s time as superintendent, nobody else has led DC schools for as long, and very few for more than a few years.
There is no happy ending here. The system broke and it never, ever recovered.
We live in the shadow of the 1960s.
-
Comment on Pedagogy recommendations in ~humanities
skybrian LinkNot a teacher and I can't guess how well it would work, but the "classroom tips" look pretty interesting.Not a teacher and I can't guess how well it would work, but the "classroom tips" look pretty interesting.
-
Pedagogy recommendations
18 votes -
Comment on Debunking “When Prophecy Fails” in ~science
skybrian LinkNow there's a New Yorker article: Is Cognitive Dissonance A Thing?Now there's a New Yorker article: Is Cognitive Dissonance A Thing?
-
Comment on Why do commercial spaces sit vacant? in ~finance
skybrian LinkFrom the article: ... ... ... ...From the article:
The short answer is both simple and surprising: in many cases, lowering the rent on a building will force the bank to foreclose on it.
Foreclosure is very bad for both the bank and the operator, so both parties would rather “extend and pretend,” leaving the building vacant while they wait and hope for the market to change.
This seems absurd. Surely everyone would be better off it they just lowered the rent and got some use out of the building — getting some rent must be better than getting no rent, right?
Intuition fails because normal people think of a building as a building, when in the majority of cases, a building is not a building, but a financial product. Behavior that makes no sense for buildings can make perfect sense for a financial product.
...
The important thing to understand here is that the actual building is not an important part of the value calculation. We’re not really looking at the replacement cost, the unique design, the amenities, the location, etc. Those things influence the assumptions about the gross rent we can get, or the cost of operating the building (higher cost means less net rent), but at the end of the day it isn’t the building that has value, it’s the income stream.
...
Remember, the building isn’t a building, it’s an income stream. Before, the operator and the bank had a model that said the operator would be able to make $1M per year. Now, reality has proven the operator can only make $700k per year.
700k per year is not worth $20M. Given our agreed-upon cap rate of 5%, this proven $700k per year income stream is only worth $700k/0.5 =$14M.
In this scenario, the building has proven to only be worth $14M, but the operator owes $16M to the bank, so he is now $2M underwater on the loan. In two more years he’ll have to pay off the full $16M, and he doesn’t have that much cash, so he’ll need to refinance.
...
When year five rolls around and the loan on the building comes due, both the original bank and the owner would like to avoid losing a combined $6M. And so long as the operator can afford to keep losing $140k per year on the building… they can!
What they need to do is stick to the original model. Don’t lower the rent. Just claim that there was a blip in the market, nobody could have seen that coming, it’s all going to be fine.
...
The only sticking point here is that the building operator is still losing $140k per year. But remember that if he gives up, he loses the $4M he’s already put into the building. Even if he ended up paying $140k per year for 10 years before things turned around, losing $1.4M is still better than losing $4M.
So both the operator and the bank have a lot of incentive to extend and pretend, rather than lower the rent and face the consequences of having overpaid for the building.
-
Why do commercial spaces sit vacant?
27 votes -
Comment on The gift card accountability sink in ~finance
skybrian Link ParentI'm definitely a fan (most of his articles on Tildes were shared by me), but I think his writing style is overly clever and often hard to understand. This article is short, which helps.I'm definitely a fan (most of his articles on Tildes were shared by me), but I think his writing style is overly clever and often hard to understand. This article is short, which helps.
-
Comment on The gift card accountability sink in ~finance
skybrian Link ParentIn the US, every store has them, so I assume they're pretty popular.In the US, every store has them, so I assume they're pretty popular.
-
Comment on Releasing CORE One CAD files under the new Open Community License (OCL) in ~tech
skybrian LinkPrusa is introducing a new hardware license customized to their needs. (I don't think it counts as an open source license, and they don't claim it does, other than the title.) From the article:...Prusa is introducing a new hardware license customized to their needs. (I don't think it counts as an open source license, and they don't claim it does, other than the title.) From the article:
The Open Community License (OCL) is our answer to the gaps left by traditional software licenses when applied to physical hardware.
It is designed to be concise and human-readable (it fits on one page) and it even includes practical examples linked directly in the document so you know exactly what you can and cannot do.
-
For Makers & Hackers: You have complete freedom to use, modify, and share derivatives back to the community.
-
For Businesses: You can build and modify machines based on the source designs for your internal production (e.g., a custom print farm). Unlike vague “Non-Commercial” licenses, OCL explicitly allows you to make money using these designs to run your business; you just can’t make money selling the machines.
-
The Restriction: You cannot commercially exploit the design files (selling the product or remixes) without a separate agreement.
-
The Protection: It includes an explicit patent license grant, protection against AI data mining, and a codified Right-to-Repair.
[...]
[W]e are missing a simple (and I cannot stress this enough) license that would be fully open for non-commercial and still open for internal commercial use. Basically we had to either choose a fully open or copyleft license which removes all control or a non-commercial licence which restricts all business use.
Furthermore, most licenses were source code focused and hardly usable for data (graphical or technical) let alone hardware itself. Based on that we had to mix and match licenses that can sort of live together in one product each for different part. OCL should remove these restrictions. Keep things open, if needed all under the same license, and still keep control to exclude people who don’t play fair.
The license is short, but to some terms seem ambiguous to me. (What is "data mining," exactly?) I wonder what lawyers familiar with how open source licensing works would thing of this?
-
-
Releasing CORE One CAD files under the new Open Community License (OCL)
10 votes -
Comment on The gift card accountability sink in ~finance
skybrian LinkFrom the article: .... ...From the article:
[...] [I]f you call your bank and say, “I was defrauded! Someone called me and pretended to be the IRS, and I read them my debit card number, and now I’ve lost money,” the state machine obligates the financial institution to have the customer service representative click a very prominent button on their interface. This will restore your funds very quickly and have some side effects you probably care about much less keenly. One of those is an “investigation,” which is not really an investigation in the commanding majority of cases.
And if you call the program manager and say, “I was defrauded! Someone called me and pretended to be the IRS, and I read them a gift card number, and now I’ve lost money,” there is… no state machine. There is no legal requirement to respond with alacrity, no statutorily imposed deadline, no button for a CS rep to push, and no investigation to launch. You will likely be told by a low-paid employee that this is unfortunate and that you should file a police report. [...]
....
The people of the United States, through their elected representatives and the civil servants who labor on their behalf, intentionally exempt gift cards from the Reg E regime in the interest of facilitating commerce.
...
And so the fraud supply chain comes to learn which firms haven’t done that investment, and preferentially suggests those gift cards to their launderers, mules, brick movers, and scam victims.
And that’s why the AARP tells fibs about gift cards: we have, with largely positive intentions and for good reasons, exposed them to less regulation than most formal payment systems in the United States received. That decision has a cost. Grandma sometimes pays it.
-
The gift card accountability sink
22 votes -
Comment on Statement from Mozilla's new CEO in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentThis is just blatant low-effort anti-Google bias, no facts involved. I wish such posts weren't so commonly accepted.This is just blatant low-effort anti-Google bias, no facts involved. I wish such posts weren't so commonly accepted.
-
Comment on AI will likely affect administrative and operational jobs in heathcare in ~health
skybrian (edited )Link ParentReducing costs (and prices) is obviously an important goal, but it's also the case that many products have vastly improved. Computers, electronics and cars most obviously.Reducing costs (and prices) is obviously an important goal, but it's also the case that many products have vastly improved. Computers, electronics and cars most obviously.
-
Comment on How Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentWe just got a Roborock (based on Wirecutter's recommendation) for our new house and it kind of works, but it seems kind of mediocre at cleaning rooms with rugs. It tends to leave dust bunnies...We just got a Roborock (based on Wirecutter's recommendation) for our new house and it kind of works, but it seems kind of mediocre at cleaning rooms with rugs. It tends to leave dust bunnies everywhere despite cleaning the brush often. Maybe it's because we also got new rugs.
-
Comment on AI will likely affect administrative and operational jobs in heathcare in ~health
skybrian (edited )Link ParentThis is assuming that new technologies will be implemented badly. Often they are, but I think that's better judged on a case-by-case basis.This is assuming that new technologies will be implemented badly. Often they are, but I think that's better judged on a case-by-case basis.
-
Comment on AI will likely affect administrative and operational jobs in heathcare in ~health
skybrian Link ParentNever tried it, but I've heard that asking for the cash price sometimes works? We do pay cash for dental and vision, because it wasn't clear that the insurance was worth it.Never tried it, but I've heard that asking for the cash price sometimes works?
We do pay cash for dental and vision, because it wasn't clear that the insurance was worth it.
-
Comment on EU drops 2035 combustion engine ban as global electric vehicle shift faces reset in ~transport
skybrian Link ParentThis sounds a lot like retirement communities with extensive golf cart paths, like The Villages and Sun City. They do also have roads for cars, though.This sounds a lot like retirement communities with extensive golf cart paths, like The Villages and Sun City.
They do also have roads for cars, though.
Yes, I’ll look into it later.