Category: Education

Aaron Brown Asks UNL Tough Questions on Students’ Right to Defend Themselves

 

  Source of image is screen capture from KETV web page:  http://www.ketv.com/news/13120432/detail.html

 

Aaron Brown was an excellent student in my micro-principles course several years ago, and now he is a law student at UNL.  You may also remember him as a frequent contributor of comments to entries on this blog.

He’s gotten some attention today (4/26/07) by speaking out for the right of college students to defend themselves by bearing arms.

For the KETV (Omaha ABC channel 7) story, see:  http://www.ketv.com/news/13120432/detail.html

For the KOLN (Omaha Fox channel 10) story, see:  http://www.kolnkgin.com/news/headlines/7209236.html

 

Obama Should Support School Vouchers Experiment

 

There’s something about our nation’s capital that converts many leading Democrats to school choice. Perhaps it’s the glimpse that Washington, D.C. affords into inner-city public schools.

But in most cases this appreciation of school choice extends only to their own children — and not to the millions of children in failing public schools. Indeed, a nearly perfect correlation exists among Democratic presidential candidates who have exercised school choice for their own children and those who would deny such choices to the parents of other children.

. . .

The mystery man is Sen. Barack Obama, who sends his child to a private school in Chicago yet once referred to school vouchers as "social Darwinism." Still, he says that on education reform, "I think a good place to start would be for both Democrats and Republicans to say . . . we are willing to experiment and invest in anything that works."

Well, school choice works. Every study that compares children who applied for school choice scholarships and received them with those who applied but did not shows improved academic performance. More important, every study that has examined the effect of school choice competition has found significantly improved performance by public schools.

Given their track records it is doubtful how many candidates will agree with Sen. Obama’s professed openness to experiment. But as he might say, we can always have the audacity to hope.

 

For the full commentary, see:

CLINT BOLICK.  "Selective School Choice."  The Wall Street Journal  (Fri., March 2, 2007):  A11.

(Note:  ellipsis between paragraphs was added; ellipsis within Obama quote was in the original.)

 

 

For Better Jobs, Immigrants Voluntarily Line Up to Learn English


          In Mount Vernon, New York, Maria de Oliveira (center) waited three months for an opening in this English class.  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

 

In the United States, other things equal, those who speak English earn more than those who do not.  So there is a substantial incentive for immigrants to learn English, even in the absence of the much-debated proposed laws to mandate English in various ways.  Consider the evidence in the article excerpted below: 

 

(p. A1)  MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. — Two weeks after she moved here from her native Brazil, Maria de Oliveira signed up for free English classes at a squat storefront in this working-class suburb, figuring that with an associate’s degree and three years as an administrative assistant, she could find a good job in America so long as she spoke the language.

The woman who runs the classes at Mount Vernon’s Workforce and Career Preparation Center added Ms. Oliveira’s name to her pink binder, at the bottom of a 90-person waiting list that stretched across seven pages. That was in October. Ms. Oliveira, 26, finally got a seat in the class on Jan. 16.

“I keep wondering how much more I’d know if I hadn’t had to wait so long,” she said in Portuguese.

. . .

Luis Sanchez, 47, a Peruvian truck driver for a beer distributor in New Brunswick, has been in this country (p. C14) 10 years — and on the waiting list for English classes in Perth Amboy five months. “You live from day to day, waiting to get the call that you can come to class,” Mr. Sanchez said in Spanish, explaining that he knew a little English but wanted to improve his writing skills so he could apply for better jobs. “I keep on waiting.”

. . .

In Newburgh, N.Y., an Orange County town where one in five of the 29,000 residents are immigrants, Blanca Saravia has amassed an impressive portfolio of odd jobs since arriving from Honduras in 2004: gas station attendant, office janitor, cook’s helper, and, for the last 14 months, packager at a local nail-polish factory. Speaking in her native Spanish, Ms. Saravia said that she has been able to get by with co-workers’ translating, but that “when the boss gives orders, I don’t understand.”

. . .

. . .   Ahmed Al Saidi, 49, who works at a gas station and moved from Yemen in 1994, said in halting English that he wants to learn the language “for better work and to talk to people when I go to the store.”

Ms. Oliveira, the immigrant from Brazil, said she still knows too little English to venture into the marketplace; her husband, who is American born and supports the couple financially, encouraged her to enroll in the classes, held five mornings a week.

“I hope that when I’m speaking a little better, I’ll be able to find a job where I can use the English I learned here and the skills I have from back home,” she said in Portuguese. “When I was on the waiting list, there were times I thought this time would never come.” 

 

For the full story, see: 

FERNANDA SANTOS.  "Demand for English Lessons Outstrips Supply."  The New York Times  (Tues., February 27, 2007):  A1 & C14.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

 

  Source of graphic:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.


UNO Economics RA Talks Personal Finance

McGrathMollyPersonalFinance.jpg   Molly McGrath.  Soure of photo:  online version of the Omaha World-Herald article cited below.

 

Molly was one of our Research Assistants last year in the UNO economics department: 

 

(p. 1D)  Miss Nebraska Molly McGrath has driven more than 25,000 miles since being crowned in June, mostly to schools as she talks about personal finance issues like avoiding debt and using money as a tool to realize dreams.

"There is a drastic need for economic and financial education with all people, but especially in low-income communities and especially among our youth," McGrath told about a dozen people at a recent meeting of the Rotary Club of Omaha-North.

McGrath knows about making ends meet. Her parents could not help her pay for college, so she has used more than $20,000 in scholarships won through the Miss America program. She also cleaned toilets, dorm rooms and apartments as she earned her undergraduate degree at New York University in New York.

"I was known right away at NYU as the girl from Nebraska," McGrath said. "And after I started this cleaning business I was known as the girl from Nebraska who cleans toilets."

 

For the full story, see: 

JOE RUFF.  "Miss Nebraska teaches dollars and sense."  Omaha World-Herald  (Monday, February 26, 2007):  1D & 2D.

 

Omaha Public Schools’ Attack on Other Districts Costs $12 Million in Lawyer Fees

Source of graphic:  online version of the Omaha World-Herald article cited below.

 

(p. 1A)  Who’s winning in the Omaha-area disputes about school finances and boundaries?.

So far, it looks like the lawyers.

Taxpayers have shelled out $12 million to private lawyers hired to handle those matters for Omaha-area school districts and the State of Nebraska, a World-Herald study found.

Nearly all of that has been paid during the past 31/2 years to two Omaha firms: Baird Holm, hired by the Omaha Public Schools, and Fraser Stryker, which was hired by the state and separately by the suburban districts.

The money has been spent on three interconnected items:

• The OPS lawsuit against the state’s school funding system, which accounts for most of the $12 million.

• The Omaha district’s effort, now on hold, to take over its suburban neighbors.

• And fallout from the Legislature’s 2006 law that would break apart OPS and create a two-county "learning community" for the Omaha metro area.

The $12 million doesn’t include lobbying costs or staff time for the three matters. And it doesn’t include millions of dollars the districts paid lawyers during the same period for routine legal work.

The three items have fueled a stunning increase in OPS payments to lawyers. The district now pays about $400,000 a month in legal fees – four times what it (p. 2A) paid five years ago.

"This seems to me to be crazy," said State Sen. Ron Raikes of Lincoln, who introduced a bill this year aimed at curbing school districts’ spending on legal fees.

"These are legal fees, paid pretty much by taxpayers, for a school district to conduct a legal war against another school district or against the state," said Raikes, who heads the Legislature’s education committee.

 

For the full story, see:

PAUL GOODSELL.  "Lawyers reap OPS windfall; District, state actions cost taxpayers $12 million, so far."   OMAHA WORLD-HERALD  (Sunday, March 4, 2007):  1A & 2A.

(Note:  the online version had the somewhat different title:  "OPS legal fees cost taxpayers $12 million, so far.")

 

Milton Friedman’s School Vouchers Pass Utah Senate

I received an email mailing yesterday (2/9/07) from Robert Fanger, who is the Communications Director of the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation.  He wrote:  "By a vote of 19 to 10, the Utah Senate passed the universal school voucher bill this afternoon."

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial on the issue that is excerpted below:

 

Proving that the best reforms often pass by the slimmest of margins, Utah’s house voted 38-37 late last week to create a state-wide voucher program that will allow students to escape failing public schools.

Union opponents can be expected to mount a furious assault in the state senate, and then head to court. But the senate is likely to pass the reform supported by GOP Governor Jon Huntsman Jr., so Utah may soon become the first state with a universal school choice plan. It would offer students who attend private K-12 schools from $500 to $3,000 in tuition reimbursement based on family income.

Meanwhile, South Carolina could be next. Legislation is now being drafted to allow nearly 200,000 poor students to opt out of failing public schools by giving them up to $4,500 a year to spend on private school tuition. Middle class parents would be eligible for a $1,000 tax credit.

 

Reference for editorial:

"Choice Advances."  The Wall Street Journal  (Weds., February 7, 2007):  A14.

 

The Difference Between Being a University President and Being a Cabinet Officer

 

At a dinner last week to announce the winner of the business book of the year award, Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary, poked fun at his tenure as the president of Harvard.  . . .

Specifically, he said he was woefully naïve when he had been first asked to describe the difference between being a university president and being a cabinet officer. ”I guess I didn’t get it right in the answer I gave in my first year or two,” he said, ”because I used to say, ‘Well, in Washington, it’s so political; there’s organized opposition to everything.’ ”

 

For the full story, see: 

JANE L. LEVERE.  "OPENERS: SUITS; HARVARD EDUCATION."  The New York Times, Section 3 (Sun., October 29, 2006):  2.

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

 

Closing the Alleged ‘Digital Divide’

 One version of the laptops produced by One Laptop Per Child for roughly $100 a piece.  Source of image:  http://www.laptop.org/OLPC_files/nigeria.jpg

 

Simply giving each child a laptop, won’t much improve their standard of living.  (See Easterly’s The Elusive Quest for Growth.)  But maybe a few of the children will obtain access to information about what is possible in the outside world, and maybe that will lead them to fight for more freedom?

But at least, if they remain poor, it will not be possible to lay the blame on some sort of ‘digital divide.’  Lay the blame, instead on government economic planning. 

Note the aside buried in the article:  ‘competitive advantage’ economist Michael Porter is telling the Libyans how to develop a "national economic plan"??  (Say it ain’t so, Michael!)

 

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 10 — The government of Libya reached an agreement on Tuesday with One Laptop Per Child, a nonprofit United States group developing an inexpensive, educational laptop computer, with the goal of supplying machines to all 1.2 million Libyan schoolchildren by June 2008.

The project, which is intended to supply computers broadly to children in developing nations, was conceived in 2005 by a computer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nicholas Negroponte.  His goal is to design a wireless-connected laptop that will cost about $100 after the machines go into mass production next year.

. . .

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, suggested that the next generation of cellphones might be a better way to reach across the so-called digital divide.

Mr. Negroponte said Microsoft refused to sell its Windows software to the project at a price that would make it possible to include in his system.  As a result, his laptops will come with the freely available Linux operating system, which is becoming increasingly popular in the developing world.

The idea of a laptop for every schoolchild grew out of Mr. Negroponte’s experience in giving children Internet-connected laptops in rural Cambodia.  He said the first English word out of the mouths of the Cambodian students was “Google.”

Discussions between the One Laptop project and the Libyan government began as part of work being done by the Monitor Group, an international consulting firm co-founded by the economist Michael E. Porter.  It is now helping the Libyans develop a national economic plan.

. . .  

The first test models will be distributed to the five participating countries companies at the end of this November, according to Mr. Negroponte, and mass production is planned for June or July of 2007.

The computers come with a wireless connection, a built-in video camera, an eight-hour battery and a hand crank for recharging batteries.  They will initially be priced below $150, and the price is expected to decline when they are manufactured in large numbers.

 

For the full story, see:

JOHN MARKOFF.  "U.S. Group Reaches Deal to Provide Laptops to All Libyan Schoolchildren."  The New York Times  (Weds., October 11, 2006):  A14.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

 

  MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte.  Source of image:  online version of the NYT article cited above.

Gym Classes Promote Sports, Not Healthy Exercise

 

Here is more evidence that public school physical education classes should be turned over to private sector firms like "24 Hour Fitness."  

Ms. Jackie Lund, who is quoted below, is the President of NASPE, which the article identifies as "an association of fitness educators and professionals.  Note well that she as much as admits that fitness is not the purpose of gym classes.

 

Researchers report that in the typical high-school gym class students are active for an average of 16 minutes.

The report by Cornell University researchers also found that adding 200 minutes more of physical-education time a week had little effect. (See the report.)

"What’s actually going on in gym classes?  Is it a joke?" asked John Cawley, lead author of the study and a professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell.

. . .

The rest of the extra gym time is likely spent being idle — most likely standing around while playing sports like softball or volleyball that don’t require constant movement, Mr. Cawley said.

. . .

. . . , Ms. Lund says merely counting how many minutes students are moving may not be a fair measure of a gym class.  "It’s not supposed to be aerobics class.  The activity level is going to vary depending on the sport they’re learning," she said.

 

For the full story, see: 

"High-Schoolers Get Scant Exercise in Gym Class."   Wall Street Journal  (Weds., September 20, 2006):  D4.

(Note:  the online version of the article has the title:  "Is High-School Gym Class An Exercise in Futility?")

(Note:  ellipses are added.)

 

Internet Reduces Elite Universities’ Competitive Edge

With professors spending so much time blogging for no payment, universities might wonder whether this detracts from their value.  Although there is no evidence of a direct link between blogging and publishing productivity, a new study* by E. Han Kim and Adair Morse, of the University of Michigan, and Luigi Zingales, of the University of Chicago, shows that the internet’s ability to spread knowledge beyond university classrooms has diminished the competitive edge that elite schools once held.

Top universities once benefited from having clusters of star professors.  The study showed that during the 1970s, an economics professor from a random university, outside the top 25 programmes, would double his research productivity by moving to Harvard.  The strong relationship between individual output and that of one’s colleagues weakened in the 1980s, and vanished by the end of the 1990s.

The faster flow of information and the waning importance of location—which blogs exemplify—have made it easier for economists from any university to have access to the best brains in their field.  That anyone with an internet connection can sit in on a virtual lecture from Mr DeLong means that his ideas move freely beyond the boundaries of Berkeley, creating a welfare gain for professors and the public.  

For the full story, see:

"FINANCE & ECONOMICS: Economists’ blogs; The invisible hand on the keyboard; Why do economists spend valuable time blogging?"  The Economist 380, no. 8489 (Aug. 3, 2006):  67. 

 

The full reference to the paper by Kim et al, is:

* “Are Elite Universities Losing Their Competitive Edge?” by E. Han Kim, Adair Morse and Luigi Zingales. NBER working paper 12245, May 2006.

(Thanks to Carolyn Diamond for giving me a copy of the article from The Economist.) 

 

Exercising to Win, Hurts Lifetime Fitness

Source of image:  online version of the NYT article cited below.

 

(p. E1)  The dirty secret among former high school and college jocks is that many don’t remain active as adults.  In their glory days they were the fittest among their peers.  But as adults many are overtaken by nonjocks who embrace fitness as a commitment to health, forget the varsity letter.

Onetime elite athletes often languish once organized competition is over and a coach isn’t hounding them, sports scientists and exercise physiologists say.  Many are burned out.  Others become discouraged when their lackluster fitness can’t compare to their highlight reels.  Running on a treadmill in a sea of anonymous gym-goers doesn’t compare to the thrill of being an m.v.p. on campus.

"Basically, they’ve been to the mountaintop and now they’re on these little hills, and that is difficult to deal with," said Dan Gould, the director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University in Lansing.

Extrinsic motivation is tricky business, said Dr. Gould, a professor of kinesiology.  He said he has found that athletes who played for trophies (p. E8) or attention are more at risk of becoming sedentary as adults than people who have taught themselves to get off the sofa and exercise, those with "intrinsic motivation."

 

For the full story, see:

JILL AGOSTINO.  "Once an Athletic Star, Now an Unheavenly Body."   The New York Times  (Thurs.,  July 6, 2006):  E1 & E8.