I've been getting nagged from all sides (mostly in the form of merciless ridicule at the infrequency of my posts) to get back to the blog. So, here's a treat for all of you superfans... you know who you are. Take small sips, you don't want to burn your brain.
Lots of issues are back on "the public's" (i.e. the media's) lips these days, what with an election coming up and all. Pretend that I'm running for elected office and read my sound bites (okay, they’re too long to be sound bites. “ Sound snacks”, I guess) on the hot topics of the day (they're not all original ideas, but I'm going to go full-on politician mode and pretend that they're all mine!). Here they are, from A to Z:
A is for ABORTION: "From my perspective, it seems that this issue hinges on one question: Is an unborn fetus in fact a person, and therefore entitled to the same rights extended to every other person on earth, regardless of age, gender, race, religion or creed? If this is the question we are attempting to answer, let us tread very carefully, and be mindful of our nation's shameful history of answering this question "no" when it has been applied to Native Americans, Blacks, women, and others. History shows that this is not a question to be answered easily nor without a willingness to accept the harsh implications of either outcome."
B is for BARRY BONDS: "Did Barry Bonds use steroids? Probably. Should he have an asterisk next to his name in the record books? I don't think so... unless everybody else gets one. To pretend that every season, every player begins and ends the season under conditions identical to every other player since the beginning of baseball is ridiculous. Every era, every team, every ballpark has its quirks that make the experience of every player different. This isn't science; it's not a controlled experiment - it's entertainment! It's actually to the benefit of the public that baseball isn't exactly the same every single time... the fun wouldn't last very long. Barry Bonds played in an era of steroids, as the recent congressional report confirmed what everyone had long suspected. Barry was competing against teams with "enhanced" hitters, facing "enhanced" pitchers, and his experience was in this regard totally unlike anything Ruth, Aaron, Maris or Mays ever faced. Even without considering the issue of steroids, there are myriad reasons why every hitters case is different: The extensive use of middle relief and closers, the ever changing strike zone, new stadiums a mile above sea level, the wide variation of distances to the wall (and heights of the wall) from ballpark to ballpark, and more. If records can only be broken under the exact conditions under which they were set, no records could ever be broken. Was Barry wrong? Of course he was, and what's worse, he took part in a growing culture of steroid use that is spreading to college and high school athletes at an alarming rate. Barry had no excuse to abuse the position that his fame puts him in as a role model and add fuel to this growing public health crisis. Should he be in the record book, though? I think so. If Hitler and Stalin can be Time's Men of the Year, I see no reason that Bonds (or Rose, for that matter) should be kept out of the record books or the Hall of Fame. They were phenomenal ball players, who made phenomenal mistakes."
C is for CHINA: "It's unrealistic to expect China or any other fast-growing economy to take the environment or fair trade policies into account when the biggest example of a rich, successful nation is utterly unwilling to make any concessions on any front or even to acknowledge that the concerns of 90% of the world's population should in any way influence our energy policies. If we bite the bullet and adopt and enforce stricter environmental regulations, we can set the model that the rest of the world will follow."
D is for DARFUR: "If we're not afraid to go against the world and invade Iraq, and we're not afraid to take on up-and-coming nuclear states like Iran and North Korea, what are we afraid of in Darfur? Whose permission are we waiting for to go in and save innocent lives? The lack of a military response may be justifiable to many like me who are hesitant to believe that violence is ever a solution, and who never look to it to bring about progress, but only as a last-ditch resort to slow down wholesale slaughter with no end in sight. The lack of an aggressive diplomatic push with the full weight of our economic and political influence across the world, however, is totally inexcusable. How many people do we think we're saving with our "Save Darfur" T-shirts? Is the Janjaweed susceptible to political pressure expressed only through "Genocide Sucks" bumper stickers? What in the world are we waiting for?"
E is for EDUCATION: "Half a decade after Brown vs. Board of Education, schools in the deep south are largely integrated while the enlightened coasts are more segregated than ever. In the guise of innocuous sounding programs like 'neighborhood schools,' 'vouchers,' and the closure of 'under-enrolled' schools due to a dearth of school-age children (at least, of certain ethnicities) in urban school districts, schools in the big cities of our nation are becoming monochromatic. In San Francisco, the alleged capital of progressive political ideology, a complex school-choice system ensures parents with political clout that their children will not be stuck in "under-performing" schools, and the implications of this practice can be seen when taking a tour of the cities elementary schools and being able to categorize them at a glance as "black," "Asian," "Latino," or "white" schools, with the only concession to integration being a white minority at an "Asian" school, or a school integrated with black and Latino students from similar socio-economic backgrounds."
F is for FCC: "TV producers tell us that they're just supplying the product that people want. How do people know they want that? Why do TV shows need to advertise if that's what people want anyway? The reality is that tragically, we have learned to look to TV to tell us what normal, successful people are supposed to look like. 'Reality' TV purports to show us what real life looks like, and while adults with life experience know that the reality they show is pure fantasy, children are being taught to expect life to look a certain way. All that being said, we parents need to make some hard decisions. I would love it if my child could turn on the TV and I didn't have to worry about what they might see. Since I can't do that (and probably won't be able to anytime soon), I'll take responsibility for my own child and keep the remote control on top of a high shelf, and make TV time something we do together."
G is for GUANTANAMO: "What's a worse injustice: for a criminal to go free, or for an innocent person to be locked up? Here's a better question: What's a worse injustice - for a criminal to have a trial, or for an innocent person to be locked up without a trial for 5, 6, 7 years? We're the good guys because we don't lock people up for years without a trial, because we don't attack countries we don't like without being attacked first. It makes us vulnerable, but we can't give that up without giving up our identity. What cost security? Are we willing to give up our souls to feel safe? We are taking the first steps on a road that will make us to the world what Saddam and the Republican Guard were to Iraq. Let's get off that road!"
H is for HOLLYWOOD: "Film and Television represent that rarest of things: a medium in which an artist can actually ditch their day job. Say what you will about the quality of the art being turned out, it is art, nonetheless, and the artists who create it should not be exploited by the middlemen who distribute it. The writers are the originators of a work, and if someone else is able to take that and turn it into millions of dollars, it's only because the writers themselves did not spend their time raising capital and developing distribution companies... they were too busy writing! If you make money off of what the writers wrote, pay them for it. Simple. End the strike by doing the right thing."
I is for IMMIGRATION: "Any proposal to address immigration that has any chance of implementation must address both sides of the issue: What is the cost on our society that will be alleviated by this solution, and what is the cost that will be incurred? To date, I have heard no proposals that involve voluntary or forced deportation of undocumented immigrants that incorporates a system to save the industries that will suffer collapse due to the loss of a vital workforce, most notably the hotel and restaurant industries. Nor do they address the unavoidable implication of skyrocketing produce prices leading to a collapse of American agriculture and a growing dependence on cheap food from overseas if American growers don't have the affordable workforce necessary to harvest what they have grown. It's one thing to be dependent on foreign powers for the gas we need to drive to the grocery store; it's quite another to be dependent on them for the very food we need for our survival."
J is for JOURNALISM: “Ideally, the job of a journalist is to present a forum in which both sides of an issue can be presented and verify or dispute the facts (not conclusions) as presented by both sides. When journalism becomes about reporting only what is said about an issue and doesn’t do the hard work of verifying claims made, it loses credibility. Politicians can also skirt the verification problem by making grand pronouncements about what they’re going to do in the future and then just not following through. Journalists these days aren’t great at follow-up. The media has a dual role of keeping the public informed and of keeping those in power accountable. If either of those roles is forsaken, the media becomes irrelevant.”
K is for KARMA: “You know you’re in trouble when the future of the world depends on other countries NOT following your example. We spend so much time spinning our wheels trying to get other countries to believe that they really shouldn’t try to become like us and then wonder why they don’t take us seriously. We don’t want any other countries to develop nuclear weapons, to have a strong military, to launch pre-emptive strikes on their enemies, to pass legislation aimed at forcing conformity to religious norms, to disenfranchise minority groups politically, to put supposed enemies in prison for years without access to legal counsel or a speedy trial, to pursue reckless industrial development at the expense of environmental responsibility, or to make decisions for their own benefit without taking the impact on the rest of the world into account. In other words, we don’t want them to be like us. And we wonder why they hate us.”
L is for LEGISLATING MORALITY: "Should a political candidate who self-identifies as a Christian be held to the moral and ethical standards of the Christian religious tradition by other Christians? Absolutely. Does it become an obligation on the part of that candidate to support legislation that would make it a crime against the United States for citizens who are not Christians to violate the moral and ethical standards of the Christian religious tradition? Absolutely not! Should the religious leaders of the candidates denomination threaten to refuse the sacrament of holy communion to any person, be they candidate or not, who willingly and repeatedly violates the ethical and moral standards of their religious tradition and is blatantly unrepentant? Perhaps. But should they threaten to withhold the sacrament of holy communion to politicians who do not support legislation making it a crime to violate Christian ethical and moral standards? Absolutely not! It is one thing for a Christian to commit adultery and proclaim themselves free of guilt or regret. Such a person is denying their identity as a Christian which is founded on submission to the teaching of scripture. It is quite another, however, for a Christian to choose not to pursue legislation that would make adultery a jailable offense. Should people who lie about the size of the fish they caught or use foul language when watching the game with their buddies be locked up? Do you think God would actually be pleased to have a bunch of people acting like they respect him only because they're afraid of being thrown in jail? That is not the God of Christianity."
M is for MARRIAGE: "I find it offensive that the secular government feels that I need to get their permission to marry at all. Marriage is a cultural and religious institution, and should not be moderated by the government in any way. The government is useful as a record keeper and mediator of social contracts that individuals enter into granting to each other financial and social rights that the law reserves only unto individuals, and as such, the government should continue to hold onto records of such arrangements, whether they occur in the context of traditional marriages, civil unions, or "common-law" marriages. The actual designation of a relationship as a "marriage" however, is something I think the government should have no place in. I was married to my wife under the authority of God and the church according to Christian tradition. I appreciate the government doing the paperwork that allows me to include my wife as a dependent when applying for health care, but I don't think the legitimate role of the government should extend beyond that. The government can't tell the church who they must marry. The church doesn't get to tell the government who gets to be declared as a dependent on their taxes. It's really that simple."
N is for NO-BID CONTRACTS: “Seemingly illogical actions and choices on the part of those in power can be better understood when we realize that they won’t always hold their office, and it pays to have rich friends who are grateful to you when you retire. Maybe the future of Iraq and Afghanistan are being set up for further failure, and maybe the economy of our own country is being destroyed, but these guys are making their friends rich and earning a lot of good will… so why should they care?”
O is for OIL SPILLS: "The front pages of every major newspaper in the Bay Area proclaimed the 100's of volunteers demanding to be put to work saving the aquatic wildlife being threatened by the tragic spill. 'HEARTBREAKING' exclaimed the San Francisco Chronicle on the front page, above a photo of an oil-covered seabird. It breaks my heart that 100's of volunteers don't show up to clean up the sewage soaked bedrooms of children in Hunter's Point who are awakened by the horror of the plumbing in public housing projects nearly drowning them in human waste at 2 o'clock in the morning. Where are the volunteers when the lungs of children in poor families are filled with the pollution caused by industrial waste that surrounds their neighborhoods (after successful campaigns to keep those plants out of more affluent neighborhoods), resulting in alarmingly high rates of asthma among the most vulnerable among us, most without adequate health insurance? I'm not saying we shouldn't care about the birds. I'm saying, why do we care so much for the birds, but not for the children?"
P is for POLITICIANS: “It used to be that someone could be born in a log cabin, split rails, put themselves through law school and run for President. The cost of running a successful campaign has gotten to the point that the only people capable of running for office are representative of a narrow minority of American society whose interests often run contradictory to the vast majority of the population.”
Q is for QUAIL: “If I shot somebody in the face, I would feel really bad about it, even if they were a complete stranger. If they were a good friend, I would be sure to stay with them until their family told me to get lost. One has to wonder what went wrong with the underlying humanity of a person who could shoot a purportedly good friend in the face and then get back to business as usual. If the hunting down of ‘rogue quail’ is deemed to be a sufficiently important task as to justify so easily writing-off the potentially fatal wounding of a good friend, how can we believe that the welfare of American troops personally unknown to our leaders is important in the face of the supposed threat posed by Iraqi insurgents? And if you’re an Iraqi civilian, forget about it. You can rest assured that your well-being and survival simply don’t factor into any equations.”
R is for REALITY: “Politicians are becoming afraid to present realistic options for the tough problems facing our nation and our world in part because they’re afraid to admit that things are really so bad. Many of the press conferences we’re subjected to seem to be devoted to convincing us that things are going great. Numbers are flung at us to prove that no matter how miserable we feel, the economy is strong and everyone’s doing well. It’s a hard sell when we live every moment in the reality they’re denying, and it’s hard to see them as relevant to our lives when they seem so totally disconnected from our experience.”
S is for SUPPORT THE TROOPS: “I imagine that if the troops were asked if they felt supported by the stop-loss or the extended tours, they would politely decline to answer. I can’t imagine that policies that mean more time away from their homes and families over and over again feel incredibly supportive. I can think of two ways to support the troops: devise a strategy for quick and decisive victory and then implement it, or concede that we’ve done the best we can and bring them home. I have yet to hear anyone bring forth a viable option for the former. I suspect that this is because it would have to involve more troops than are currently interested in being supported, and instituting a draft would disturb the veil that has thus far shielded the eyes and hearts of most Americans from the harsh realities and costs of this war.”
T is for TAXES: "Unless you want to build your own road from your house to your work place, or hire some guys to hang around your front yard 24/7 just in case a fire breaks out, or broker your own personal peace treaty with North Korea, we need to pool our money together and get some people to take care of these things for all of us. That means government, and that means taxes. I have no problem with paying taxes, as long as I can still provide food, shelter and clothing for my family after I'm done. I have no problem with abolishing taxes for people who are struggling to do that, and I have no problem with raising taxes dramatically for those who make more money than some countries. But we don't really need to raise taxes; we just need to collect the taxes that are owed. Let's tighten the loopholes and increase enforcement of the existing tax code and we'll be doing alright. Multimillionaires (and billionaires) get away with tax dodges that cost the rest of us billions of dollars every year. I think that we can avoid raising taxes if we're able to figure out a way to get the money that's already owed us."
U is for UNINSURED: “The truth is that we end up paying for the medical care of uninsured Americans anyway. What happens is that without insurance they stay away from the doctor until they need an expensive hospital stay. Who pays for it? The taxpayers do. Sure, the patient ends up bankrupt, unemployed and a further drain on society, but then we end up paying for that, too. It’s interesting to see the level of preventive care I get from my provider when they know that they’ll either pay for preventive visits or extended hospital stays. It’s cheaper to keep people healthy than to treat sick people. The question is who will pay for that care? Right now the insurance companies are refusing to pay for the preventive care and the government ends up paying for the eventual treatment. The shareholders get rich and the government taxes us more. This is the issue that a single-payer system would address.”
V is for VICTORY: “What are we trying to accomplish in Iraq? What does ‘victory’ mean now? How will we know when we’ve won? I’m sure that the troops would be much more effective if they had concrete, measurable objectives that they were working toward, and could see a way home and out of this mess at the end of the tunnel.”
W is for WAR: "Jimmy Carter said that 'War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good.' War is rapidly changing from the option of last resort to the option of first resort, or of only resort. The decision to enter a war should always be heart wrenching and fraught with sadness and regret, not jubilation. We must begin each war with the daily hope that this could be the last day. We must sacrifice every comfort we enjoy in peace time if such sacrifice might bring a speedier end to bloody conflict. War is being prosecuted today in a way to ensure that it impacts the ordinary life of average Americans as little as possible, in hopes that we will let it drift to the back of our minds and be forgotten but for the occasional shocking image on the evening news. No war is fought without cost, and if a war absolutely must be fought, then we should be working every day to bring it to a swift resolution. 'Kill them all' is an unacceptable path toward this goal."
X is for X-RAYS: "Airport security has been taken over by the federal government, and now the underpaid, overworked, poorly equipped, disgruntled workers have new uniforms. Wouldn't it make sense for some of the billions that we spend each day to fight a war 'over there' were spent to protect against our getting blown up 'over here'?"
Y is for YAHOO!: “The internet gives us more access to more information… but what information? It used to be that in order for something to be made available to the public, a publisher had to believe that the information was valuable enough to invest a lot of publishing capital in it. It wasn’t always true, but it was at least entertaining. Nowadays, misspelled bigotry is held out side by side with well-researched journalism, and we haven’t been given the tools to distinguish between the two. More information isn’t automatically a good thing. They say that ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing,’ and we’re seeing the truth of that borne out.”
Z is for ZAMBIA: "AIDS is ravaging Africa. Should be good news for the pharmaceutical companies: a vast market for their antiretroviral drugs! There's no reason that we can't figure out a way to get the drugs to the people who need them and Big Pharma can make a profit. If they absolutely must make a huge, enormous profit, though, we run into problems. Africans dying of AIDS can't support the billionaire lifestyle to which Big Pharma has become accustomed. If only AIDS were ravaging New England or the Silicon Valley instead of Africa. Everyone's problems would be solved... especially the Africans!"
So there it is, my political campaign in a bottle. If there are any actual candidates that would like to license my views for their own uses, I have a wish list on Amazon...
- "It’s politics, man, politics.”
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
I'm super cool, and now there's circumstancial evidence.
One of my students has referenced me in her blog. Take that, Jaime Escalante!
- "You burros are too smart for that."
- "You burros are too smart for that."
Thursday, March 29, 2007
How Standardized Testing is Killing American Education: Reason #6
5th in a series.
6) Ranked scoring doesn't tell you anything about learning: If every student in the state dramatically improved their learning and scored much higher on the test, would you expect the average scores to go up? Likewise, if every student in the state was accidentaly given the test in Arabic instead of English, would you expect the average scores to go down? Guess what? They wouldn't! Not in either case. In both cases, the average score would be "600" no matter how many more questions were answered correctly (or incorrectly) or even if the test was an incomprehensible graduate level neuroscience test given to 3rd graders.
How can this be? Well, the "scores" that students get are not directly based on the number of answers they get right. The highest possible score is "1000", but that doesn't mean that a "600" score denotes 60% of the questions answered correctly. A student with a score of 600 may have gotten 10%, or 50%, or even 90% of the questions correct. The scores that are published for these tests are "scaled scores." Scaled scores are given based on how many students you scored better than on the test, not how many questions you got correct.
Imagine that there are 100 9th graders in California. After taking the test, the students are lined up in order based on the number of questions they answered correctly. The person at the beginning of the line might have answered 2%, or 20% (which is what you'd expect a student randomly guessing to get), or even 80% of the questions correct. Similarly, the students at the end of the line might have answered 50%, or 75%, or 98% of the questions correctly. It doesn't matter: they're just lined up in order. After they are in order, they are divided into 5 equal groups. The first 20% of the students (20 students in our example) all receive a score of "200". The next 20 students all receive a score of "400", then "600" for the next 20, "800" for the next 20, and "1000" for the 20 students with the most questions answered correctly.
A school's API (Academic Performance Index) score is the average of these "quintile" scores from all of its students. So what's the problem?
Well, let's look at our imagninary 100 9th graders. Student #3 could have answered 4% of the questions correctly, and student #18 could have answered 43% of the questions correctly, but they both get the same score: 200. Likewise, student #20 could have answered 42% of the questions correctly and student #21 could have answered 43% of the questions correctly, but student #20 will get a score of 200 while student #21 will get a score of 400... twice as many points! Can you see how these numbers can be misleading?
Another problem: schools receive a score of 1-10 based on their ranking, similar to the students. The bottom 10% get a "1", the top 10% get a "10" and so on. But the number of students that would need to move up one quintile for a school to move from a "1" to a "2" is significantly higher than the number of students that would have to move up one quintile from a "4" to a "5". The schools in the middle are bunched together very closely, and movement between the rankings doesn't necessarily indicate a large number of students scoring differently. Movement at the bottom (and at the top) on the other hand require large numbers of students to improve their scores, and the improvement in learning that moving from a "1" to a "2" is significantly greater than that of a school that moves from a "5" to a "6"... yet the numerical value given to this score is the same.
Most importantly, the only way for a student to move up in the rankings is for them to improve disproportionately more than a student that previously scored higher than they did. There will always be 20% of the students in the bottom quintile: that's how the system works. If a student moves up, another student has to move down. Therefore, we are requiring schools with low scores to teach their students more than schools with high scores. The system is basically competitive: you don't have to improve you students' learning necessarily. Rather, you need to hope for some other school to do a worse job than your school does. This puts educators (and students and parents, for that matter) in a position of hoping for other schools to educate their students poorly. I don't know about you, but I find that reprehensible. We should never put our children in a position where their success is measured in such a way that they are dependent on the failure of others. If our schools are training our children to engage in life as a zero-sum game where their well-being is predicated on the misfortune or failure of others, we are setting them up to take the messed up world they've inherited from us and make it all the more hellish.
- "'Welcome to Hell.' "Oh, thanks. That means a lot, coming from you.'"
6) Ranked scoring doesn't tell you anything about learning: If every student in the state dramatically improved their learning and scored much higher on the test, would you expect the average scores to go up? Likewise, if every student in the state was accidentaly given the test in Arabic instead of English, would you expect the average scores to go down? Guess what? They wouldn't! Not in either case. In both cases, the average score would be "600" no matter how many more questions were answered correctly (or incorrectly) or even if the test was an incomprehensible graduate level neuroscience test given to 3rd graders.
How can this be? Well, the "scores" that students get are not directly based on the number of answers they get right. The highest possible score is "1000", but that doesn't mean that a "600" score denotes 60% of the questions answered correctly. A student with a score of 600 may have gotten 10%, or 50%, or even 90% of the questions correct. The scores that are published for these tests are "scaled scores." Scaled scores are given based on how many students you scored better than on the test, not how many questions you got correct.
Imagine that there are 100 9th graders in California. After taking the test, the students are lined up in order based on the number of questions they answered correctly. The person at the beginning of the line might have answered 2%, or 20% (which is what you'd expect a student randomly guessing to get), or even 80% of the questions correct. Similarly, the students at the end of the line might have answered 50%, or 75%, or 98% of the questions correctly. It doesn't matter: they're just lined up in order. After they are in order, they are divided into 5 equal groups. The first 20% of the students (20 students in our example) all receive a score of "200". The next 20 students all receive a score of "400", then "600" for the next 20, "800" for the next 20, and "1000" for the 20 students with the most questions answered correctly.
A school's API (Academic Performance Index) score is the average of these "quintile" scores from all of its students. So what's the problem?
Well, let's look at our imagninary 100 9th graders. Student #3 could have answered 4% of the questions correctly, and student #18 could have answered 43% of the questions correctly, but they both get the same score: 200. Likewise, student #20 could have answered 42% of the questions correctly and student #21 could have answered 43% of the questions correctly, but student #20 will get a score of 200 while student #21 will get a score of 400... twice as many points! Can you see how these numbers can be misleading?
Another problem: schools receive a score of 1-10 based on their ranking, similar to the students. The bottom 10% get a "1", the top 10% get a "10" and so on. But the number of students that would need to move up one quintile for a school to move from a "1" to a "2" is significantly higher than the number of students that would have to move up one quintile from a "4" to a "5". The schools in the middle are bunched together very closely, and movement between the rankings doesn't necessarily indicate a large number of students scoring differently. Movement at the bottom (and at the top) on the other hand require large numbers of students to improve their scores, and the improvement in learning that moving from a "1" to a "2" is significantly greater than that of a school that moves from a "5" to a "6"... yet the numerical value given to this score is the same.
Most importantly, the only way for a student to move up in the rankings is for them to improve disproportionately more than a student that previously scored higher than they did. There will always be 20% of the students in the bottom quintile: that's how the system works. If a student moves up, another student has to move down. Therefore, we are requiring schools with low scores to teach their students more than schools with high scores. The system is basically competitive: you don't have to improve you students' learning necessarily. Rather, you need to hope for some other school to do a worse job than your school does. This puts educators (and students and parents, for that matter) in a position of hoping for other schools to educate their students poorly. I don't know about you, but I find that reprehensible. We should never put our children in a position where their success is measured in such a way that they are dependent on the failure of others. If our schools are training our children to engage in life as a zero-sum game where their well-being is predicated on the misfortune or failure of others, we are setting them up to take the messed up world they've inherited from us and make it all the more hellish.
- "'Welcome to Hell.' "Oh, thanks. That means a lot, coming from you.'"
Friday, March 16, 2007
How Standardized Testing is Killing American Education: Reason #7
Fourth in a series.
7) English Learners unfairly penalized: One would expect someone who is learning English to score lower on a test of English proficiency than a native English speaker. Test scores bear that out, and it's not surprising or unexpected.
There is no reason to assume, however, that someone who is learning English will necessarily be less proficient in math, or science, or general social studies (apart from US History) than native English speakers. Indeed, a student who received more education in their home country before coming to the US than a native speaker would be expected to be more proficient. At the very least, we should assume that the scores in these non-English subjects should be roughly equivalent. A more realistic assumption based on international research would be that foreign-educated students might actually score better than native English speakers educated in the American public-education system.
So why do English learners consistently score lower in math than native speakers? A cursory glance at the test will reveal this immediately: the format of the questions require a level of English proficiency just to understand what the question is; a level of English proficiency that many English learners have yet to attain.
Math questions are almost all contextualized word problems. A problem given as "4+7=___" could be accessed by anyone, regardless of English proficiency. When it is given instead as "Farmer Brown has 4 chickens and 7 ducks. How many birds does he have?" we run into problems. First, vocabulary: Farmer, chicken, duck, bird... if a student doesn't know these words, the question becomes more difficult, and not because of any deficiency in mathematical skills. Add to that the problem that comes with not realizing that "chickens" and "ducks" are both subsets of the larger category "birds" (if a student has heard of chickens but not ducks, they might legitimately answer "4"), and the various conjugations of the irregular verb "to have" (you know that "has" and "have" mean the same thing in this sentence... does an English learner know that?) and a student might get the answer wrong for several reasons that have nothing to do with their level of math proficiency, and math proficiency is what this test is supposed to be assessing.
So what do we do about it? More accurate results could come by letting students use a translating dictionary for the non-English portions of the test. This would of course have to be tied to an increase in the time allowed, since looking up 3 or 4 words per questions will most likely more than double the time necessary to finish the test. Even without the dictionary, English learners need more time to read and comprehend English texts, so the time extension or even giving unlimited time would go a long way toward redressing this inequity. Unfortunately, both of these suggestions make-up the "axis of evil" for standardized test makers: the argument is that the point of the test being "standardized" is that scores can be compared fairly because every student takes the exact same test under the exact same conditions. Any variation in conditions destroys standardization by this view. I would argue that for all subjects other than English, the opposite is true, and a fair and equitable measuring stick for students proficiency in subjects other than English cannot be attained until we sacrifice these sacred cows on the altar of equal opportunity.
(Resources: 1 2)
-"Medium-Head Boy!.... You see, he doesn't know!"
7) English Learners unfairly penalized: One would expect someone who is learning English to score lower on a test of English proficiency than a native English speaker. Test scores bear that out, and it's not surprising or unexpected.
There is no reason to assume, however, that someone who is learning English will necessarily be less proficient in math, or science, or general social studies (apart from US History) than native English speakers. Indeed, a student who received more education in their home country before coming to the US than a native speaker would be expected to be more proficient. At the very least, we should assume that the scores in these non-English subjects should be roughly equivalent. A more realistic assumption based on international research would be that foreign-educated students might actually score better than native English speakers educated in the American public-education system.
So why do English learners consistently score lower in math than native speakers? A cursory glance at the test will reveal this immediately: the format of the questions require a level of English proficiency just to understand what the question is; a level of English proficiency that many English learners have yet to attain.
Math questions are almost all contextualized word problems. A problem given as "4+7=___" could be accessed by anyone, regardless of English proficiency. When it is given instead as "Farmer Brown has 4 chickens and 7 ducks. How many birds does he have?" we run into problems. First, vocabulary: Farmer, chicken, duck, bird... if a student doesn't know these words, the question becomes more difficult, and not because of any deficiency in mathematical skills. Add to that the problem that comes with not realizing that "chickens" and "ducks" are both subsets of the larger category "birds" (if a student has heard of chickens but not ducks, they might legitimately answer "4"), and the various conjugations of the irregular verb "to have" (you know that "has" and "have" mean the same thing in this sentence... does an English learner know that?) and a student might get the answer wrong for several reasons that have nothing to do with their level of math proficiency, and math proficiency is what this test is supposed to be assessing.
So what do we do about it? More accurate results could come by letting students use a translating dictionary for the non-English portions of the test. This would of course have to be tied to an increase in the time allowed, since looking up 3 or 4 words per questions will most likely more than double the time necessary to finish the test. Even without the dictionary, English learners need more time to read and comprehend English texts, so the time extension or even giving unlimited time would go a long way toward redressing this inequity. Unfortunately, both of these suggestions make-up the "axis of evil" for standardized test makers: the argument is that the point of the test being "standardized" is that scores can be compared fairly because every student takes the exact same test under the exact same conditions. Any variation in conditions destroys standardization by this view. I would argue that for all subjects other than English, the opposite is true, and a fair and equitable measuring stick for students proficiency in subjects other than English cannot be attained until we sacrifice these sacred cows on the altar of equal opportunity.
(Resources: 1 2)
-"Medium-Head Boy!.... You see, he doesn't know!"
How Standardized Testing is Killing American Education: Reason #8
Third in a series.
8) "Scaled scores" don't tell you anything about student learning: Standardized tests scores are given as "scaled scores." This means that your score is not based directly on how many questions you got right: a student who answered 25% of the questions correctly would not receive a score half that of a student who answered 50% of the questions correctly. Rather, the scores tell you how many other students that took the test scored worse than you did. A student who scores in the 35th percentile did not necessarily get 35% of the questions correct. What happened is that 35% of the students who took the same test got less questions correct than that student did. It's possible that they got 35% of the questions correct, but it's just as possible that they got 5% of the questions correct, or 75%, or even 90%. A scaled score doesn't tell us anything about the number of questions answered correctly.
Likewise, improvement on a scaled score doesn't necessarily indicate improvement in learning. A student could answer 45% of the questions correctly one year and 55% the next year. Their scaled score could improve, or drop, or stay the same, depending on whether other students improved similarly or not. Ideally, we want all students to improve, don't we? Well, if that happens at the same rate, our scaled scores will not change at all, and will give no indication that the outcome we most desire is actually taking place!
Scaled scores are deceptive on several counts. First of all, it is not uncommon for someone to think that someone with a scaled score under 50% has mastered less than 50% of the material. That is not true. Someone with a scaled score of 50% scored higher than 50% of the students who took the same test. In other words, this is a totally average student. Right in the middle. Typical of American students in general. This students actual score could tell us a lot about the state of American education: if an average student has an actual score of 20%, we would be disappointed; likewise, an "average" actual score of 85% would be very encouraging. Unfortunately, the only score we're ever exposed to is the scaled score, which doesn't tell us a lot about what (or whether) students are actually learning.
(Resources: 1 2)
-"USA Today has come out with a new survey: Apparently three out of four people make up 75 percent of the population."
8) "Scaled scores" don't tell you anything about student learning: Standardized tests scores are given as "scaled scores." This means that your score is not based directly on how many questions you got right: a student who answered 25% of the questions correctly would not receive a score half that of a student who answered 50% of the questions correctly. Rather, the scores tell you how many other students that took the test scored worse than you did. A student who scores in the 35th percentile did not necessarily get 35% of the questions correct. What happened is that 35% of the students who took the same test got less questions correct than that student did. It's possible that they got 35% of the questions correct, but it's just as possible that they got 5% of the questions correct, or 75%, or even 90%. A scaled score doesn't tell us anything about the number of questions answered correctly.
Likewise, improvement on a scaled score doesn't necessarily indicate improvement in learning. A student could answer 45% of the questions correctly one year and 55% the next year. Their scaled score could improve, or drop, or stay the same, depending on whether other students improved similarly or not. Ideally, we want all students to improve, don't we? Well, if that happens at the same rate, our scaled scores will not change at all, and will give no indication that the outcome we most desire is actually taking place!
Scaled scores are deceptive on several counts. First of all, it is not uncommon for someone to think that someone with a scaled score under 50% has mastered less than 50% of the material. That is not true. Someone with a scaled score of 50% scored higher than 50% of the students who took the same test. In other words, this is a totally average student. Right in the middle. Typical of American students in general. This students actual score could tell us a lot about the state of American education: if an average student has an actual score of 20%, we would be disappointed; likewise, an "average" actual score of 85% would be very encouraging. Unfortunately, the only score we're ever exposed to is the scaled score, which doesn't tell us a lot about what (or whether) students are actually learning.
(Resources: 1 2)
-"USA Today has come out with a new survey: Apparently three out of four people make up 75 percent of the population."
How Standardized Testing is Killing American Education: Reason #9
Second in a series.
9) Norming is biased: "Norming" refers to comparing one students' results against all other students to determine how they compare to the population at large. Most of the time, however, the "population at large" scores are compared to is actually a smaller sample of the entire population which is judged to be a representative sample of the entire population. This smaller sample is given the test early, and those results are used to set up a virtual spread of scores.
So, you have two problems: how do you assure that your sample is truly representative of the larger population? You can select for race, number of years in the country, socio-economic status, parents' education, region of the country, gender, age, and a host of other variables that may or may not have some bearing on results, but no matter how big your sample is, you're always going to have sampling error. Choosing a representative sample is also really hard and expensive, so instead, samples tend to be less representative in favor of choosing students from the same geographical area, often close to the location of the test-makers offices. For the SAT, that meant that upper-middle class, predominantly white students were the sample that the test was normed against for years. Remember a few years back when they "rescaled" the scores and people complained that they were lowering the bar by making grading "easier"? What actually happened was that a more representative sample was used and the college board realized that their sample had been skewing the Norm high for years. The new scores are more accurate because they're based on a more representative sample.
The second big problem is just regular old sampling error. You can't get away from it. When you compound the sampling error inherent in choosing test questions with the sampling error from the group used to set the Norm, the reliability of the test results becomes shakier and shakier.
Several years ago, as Reformed Math made Integrated courses more popular, California debuted Integrated Math Standardized tests as options for schools. For several years, the results were impossible to norm: that is to say, results did not fit a normal distribution as you would expect from an unbiased test. Results had to be fiddled with and forced artificially into a normal curve. You'd think that this would reveal a flaw in the testing (even more than the normal level of error which is considerable) and states and districts might hold back on making major decisions based on these scores. No such luck. Bureaucracy reigns supreme, and the wheels of progress have too much inertia to stop turning, even if it means innocent students are crushed underneath.
(Resources: 1 2)
- "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts—for support rather than for illumination."
9) Norming is biased: "Norming" refers to comparing one students' results against all other students to determine how they compare to the population at large. Most of the time, however, the "population at large" scores are compared to is actually a smaller sample of the entire population which is judged to be a representative sample of the entire population. This smaller sample is given the test early, and those results are used to set up a virtual spread of scores.
So, you have two problems: how do you assure that your sample is truly representative of the larger population? You can select for race, number of years in the country, socio-economic status, parents' education, region of the country, gender, age, and a host of other variables that may or may not have some bearing on results, but no matter how big your sample is, you're always going to have sampling error. Choosing a representative sample is also really hard and expensive, so instead, samples tend to be less representative in favor of choosing students from the same geographical area, often close to the location of the test-makers offices. For the SAT, that meant that upper-middle class, predominantly white students were the sample that the test was normed against for years. Remember a few years back when they "rescaled" the scores and people complained that they were lowering the bar by making grading "easier"? What actually happened was that a more representative sample was used and the college board realized that their sample had been skewing the Norm high for years. The new scores are more accurate because they're based on a more representative sample.
The second big problem is just regular old sampling error. You can't get away from it. When you compound the sampling error inherent in choosing test questions with the sampling error from the group used to set the Norm, the reliability of the test results becomes shakier and shakier.
Several years ago, as Reformed Math made Integrated courses more popular, California debuted Integrated Math Standardized tests as options for schools. For several years, the results were impossible to norm: that is to say, results did not fit a normal distribution as you would expect from an unbiased test. Results had to be fiddled with and forced artificially into a normal curve. You'd think that this would reveal a flaw in the testing (even more than the normal level of error which is considerable) and states and districts might hold back on making major decisions based on these scores. No such luck. Bureaucracy reigns supreme, and the wheels of progress have too much inertia to stop turning, even if it means innocent students are crushed underneath.
(Resources: 1 2)
- "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts—for support rather than for illumination."
The Annual Standardized Testing Rant: First in a series!
Welcome back to my favorite topic: how standardized tests are killing American education. I've tackled this topic before, so this year I'm going to go for a series of the main reasons I detest standardized testing so much in the form of a "top ten" list." Here we go (drum roll, please!):
10) Sampling error makes it impossible to get accurate results: "Sampling Error" refers to the inherent error that exists when you choose a small sample of all possible items to evaluate mastery of the entire set. For standardized tests, there are millions of possible questions that could be asked to assess students' mastery of the standards that students are supposed to learn in a given year. To create a usable test, a small number of those possible questions must be chosen. The assumption is that the questions are chosen carefully enough so that they are representative of all possible questions. In other words, if a student answers 70% of the sample questions correctly, the assumption is that they would have answered 70% of all possible questions correctly.
"Sampling error" is a mathematical term that refers to the probability that the sample score is close (usually 90% or 95% accuracy is checked for) to the actual score the student would have received if tested on all questions. You see this number when political polls results are reported, it's called the "margin of error." So if candidate A is poled at 40% and candidate B is polled at 45% but the margin of error is + or - 7%, you would say that they are in a statistical tie. The margin of sampling error is greater than the difference between the results, meaning that the poll doesn't really indicate a clear advantage for either candidate.
For the California standards tests, students scores are grouped into "quintiles," where a student in the bottom 20% is in quintile 1, students in the next 20% (21% to 40%) are in quintile 2, etc. A student who is in the 3rd percentile is in quintile 1 and receives a score of 200. A student in the 19th percentile is also in the 1st quintile and also receives a score of 200. A student in the 22nd percentile would be in quintile 2 and receives a score of 400. Quintile 3 gets 600, 4 gets 800 and 5 gets 1000. The problem is, if you look at the average number of questions correct of a student in quintile 3 and the average number of questions correct of a student in quintile 4, the difference is less than the margin of error due to sampling error! Students could go up or down 1 quintile just by choosing different questions to include in the test, without any additional learning or skills on the students' part.
It seems immoral to me to attach such high stakes to tests that suffer from this tragic flaw from the outset. I think that we can use these tests as long as we acknowledge their limited ability to give us accurate data. When we make major funding decisions as if these results are objective fact and not broadly fallible approximations, we are playing Russian Roulette with our kids' education and future. Our kids deserve better than that.
(Resources: 1 2)
-"Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures."
10) Sampling error makes it impossible to get accurate results: "Sampling Error" refers to the inherent error that exists when you choose a small sample of all possible items to evaluate mastery of the entire set. For standardized tests, there are millions of possible questions that could be asked to assess students' mastery of the standards that students are supposed to learn in a given year. To create a usable test, a small number of those possible questions must be chosen. The assumption is that the questions are chosen carefully enough so that they are representative of all possible questions. In other words, if a student answers 70% of the sample questions correctly, the assumption is that they would have answered 70% of all possible questions correctly.
"Sampling error" is a mathematical term that refers to the probability that the sample score is close (usually 90% or 95% accuracy is checked for) to the actual score the student would have received if tested on all questions. You see this number when political polls results are reported, it's called the "margin of error." So if candidate A is poled at 40% and candidate B is polled at 45% but the margin of error is + or - 7%, you would say that they are in a statistical tie. The margin of sampling error is greater than the difference between the results, meaning that the poll doesn't really indicate a clear advantage for either candidate.
For the California standards tests, students scores are grouped into "quintiles," where a student in the bottom 20% is in quintile 1, students in the next 20% (21% to 40%) are in quintile 2, etc. A student who is in the 3rd percentile is in quintile 1 and receives a score of 200. A student in the 19th percentile is also in the 1st quintile and also receives a score of 200. A student in the 22nd percentile would be in quintile 2 and receives a score of 400. Quintile 3 gets 600, 4 gets 800 and 5 gets 1000. The problem is, if you look at the average number of questions correct of a student in quintile 3 and the average number of questions correct of a student in quintile 4, the difference is less than the margin of error due to sampling error! Students could go up or down 1 quintile just by choosing different questions to include in the test, without any additional learning or skills on the students' part.
It seems immoral to me to attach such high stakes to tests that suffer from this tragic flaw from the outset. I think that we can use these tests as long as we acknowledge their limited ability to give us accurate data. When we make major funding decisions as if these results are objective fact and not broadly fallible approximations, we are playing Russian Roulette with our kids' education and future. Our kids deserve better than that.
(Resources: 1 2)
-"Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures."
Thursday, January 04, 2007
New and Improved Blogging!
Hey, all,
I've added a feature to my blog that may or may not be of interest to you. On the left side of the page, there's now a list of "labels" (below the Blog Archive which is sorted by date). This will let you read the posts you really want to without having to wade through all that other stuff. Why read 22 posts on politics looking for that one on Harry Potter? Now you don't have to! You're welcome. Let me know if you can think of any more labels that would make it easier to find your favorite posts on my blog (and before you even start, I've already rejected "digital facial hair enhancement" so forget it! You'll just have to use the "Photoshop" label like everyone else!)
- "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him..."
I've added a feature to my blog that may or may not be of interest to you. On the left side of the page, there's now a list of "labels" (below the Blog Archive which is sorted by date). This will let you read the posts you really want to without having to wade through all that other stuff. Why read 22 posts on politics looking for that one on Harry Potter? Now you don't have to! You're welcome. Let me know if you can think of any more labels that would make it easier to find your favorite posts on my blog (and before you even start, I've already rejected "digital facial hair enhancement" so forget it! You'll just have to use the "Photoshop" label like everyone else!)
- "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him..."
100 hours of Pelosi
It's no more than we should expect, but it's still entertaining.
It should be no surprise that new Speaker Pelosi announced that there would be a new bipartisan tenor to the House under her leadership. After all, it's what her party complained about all through their last 12 years in the minority, and especially the last 6 years with 2 branches of the federal goverment in Republican hands.
It should also not be surprising that she has unveiled a plan for the "first 100 hours" of the 110th congress (that's about 2 weeks, I think) that pretty much shuts the Republican minority out and pushes through several key pieces of Democrat-backed legislation that languished under Republican control.
And of course, we should not be surprised that the Republicans in congress are complaining about Pelosi's decision to rush legislation that has been crafted by Democrats to votes without allowing them sufficient time to amend or debate.
Come on people, it's politics.
Of course Pelosi is going to come in promising to change everything that her opponents had been doing wrong, and to treat them better than her party had been treated while in the minority.
And of course as soon as she has the authority to actually make decisions, she's going to succumb to the temptation to push through as much broadly supported, non-controversial (or at least not-very-controversial) legislation as she can, especially when it's stuff that Democrats across the country were promising as part of taking control of Congress and it presents the appearance that things are really changing.
And of course she promises to let the Republicans play as soon as this really important stuff is settled. 100 hours, that's it, honest.
And of course the Republicans pull out the exact same complaints and arguments that the Democrats had been leveling at them for the last 6 (or, depending on how you look at it, 12) years that they're being sidelined and that legislation important to them is getting rushed through or put into drawers in committee meeting rooms. Because this is politics and everything has a half-life no longer than the daily news cycle, they are able to make these arguments without the slightest acknowledgement of any irony or awkwardness, brashly declaring "You're not playing fair!" without even a blush acknowledging the unsaid follow-up "You're doing it the same way we did for years!" or even a sheepish "I guess after the way we led, we should have expected this."
The memory of the political news cycle is notoriously short, and that's working out great for all parties involved. Pelosi can push forward in a sharply partisan fashion while promising that it's just for 100 hours, knowing full well that her prior promises of bipartisan partnership are no longer worth reporting on, and that 125 legislative hours from now nobody will bother reporting on whether or not she kept a promise she made two weeks previously. Promises are political fool's gold. Everyone reports on the promises and they get touted as accomplishments, but follow-up is poor and not "exciting" news. The politicians know it and they play it for all it's worth.
The same can be said for the Republicans in congress who feel complete freedom to blast Pelosi with the same scornful words that were justly leveled at them in years past, without shame or fear of being called "flip-floppers" (unless they run for President, I guess). The press corps is like an institutionalized version of Tom Hanks' character "Mr. Short Term Memory" from Saturday Night Live. If it happened more than a couple of days ago, it's not news. Their job is to report on what's happening now, not remind us of what happened before. The lack of accountability gives politicians license to make grandiose promises and count on the news reporting only on the promises and not coming back to follow-up.
So take the promises with a grain of salt. Check on the Congress in 200 hours or so for signs of bipartisanship in the agenda. Until then, it's politics as usual.
- "I want answers now, or I want them eventually!"
It should be no surprise that new Speaker Pelosi announced that there would be a new bipartisan tenor to the House under her leadership. After all, it's what her party complained about all through their last 12 years in the minority, and especially the last 6 years with 2 branches of the federal goverment in Republican hands.
It should also not be surprising that she has unveiled a plan for the "first 100 hours" of the 110th congress (that's about 2 weeks, I think) that pretty much shuts the Republican minority out and pushes through several key pieces of Democrat-backed legislation that languished under Republican control.
And of course, we should not be surprised that the Republicans in congress are complaining about Pelosi's decision to rush legislation that has been crafted by Democrats to votes without allowing them sufficient time to amend or debate.
Come on people, it's politics.
Of course Pelosi is going to come in promising to change everything that her opponents had been doing wrong, and to treat them better than her party had been treated while in the minority.
And of course as soon as she has the authority to actually make decisions, she's going to succumb to the temptation to push through as much broadly supported, non-controversial (or at least not-very-controversial) legislation as she can, especially when it's stuff that Democrats across the country were promising as part of taking control of Congress and it presents the appearance that things are really changing.
And of course she promises to let the Republicans play as soon as this really important stuff is settled. 100 hours, that's it, honest.
And of course the Republicans pull out the exact same complaints and arguments that the Democrats had been leveling at them for the last 6 (or, depending on how you look at it, 12) years that they're being sidelined and that legislation important to them is getting rushed through or put into drawers in committee meeting rooms. Because this is politics and everything has a half-life no longer than the daily news cycle, they are able to make these arguments without the slightest acknowledgement of any irony or awkwardness, brashly declaring "You're not playing fair!" without even a blush acknowledging the unsaid follow-up "You're doing it the same way we did for years!" or even a sheepish "I guess after the way we led, we should have expected this."
The memory of the political news cycle is notoriously short, and that's working out great for all parties involved. Pelosi can push forward in a sharply partisan fashion while promising that it's just for 100 hours, knowing full well that her prior promises of bipartisan partnership are no longer worth reporting on, and that 125 legislative hours from now nobody will bother reporting on whether or not she kept a promise she made two weeks previously. Promises are political fool's gold. Everyone reports on the promises and they get touted as accomplishments, but follow-up is poor and not "exciting" news. The politicians know it and they play it for all it's worth.
The same can be said for the Republicans in congress who feel complete freedom to blast Pelosi with the same scornful words that were justly leveled at them in years past, without shame or fear of being called "flip-floppers" (unless they run for President, I guess). The press corps is like an institutionalized version of Tom Hanks' character "Mr. Short Term Memory" from Saturday Night Live. If it happened more than a couple of days ago, it's not news. Their job is to report on what's happening now, not remind us of what happened before. The lack of accountability gives politicians license to make grandiose promises and count on the news reporting only on the promises and not coming back to follow-up.
So take the promises with a grain of salt. Check on the Congress in 200 hours or so for signs of bipartisanship in the agenda. Until then, it's politics as usual.
- "I want answers now, or I want them eventually!"
Friday, December 15, 2006
Belated Christmas Card (from Alec Baldwin)
Michelle and I were talking recently about what we would put on a Christmas "newsletter" if we were to write one, and I was reminded of this hilarious sketch from Saturday Night Live for Christmas of 1995. Alec Baldwin took the opportunity of being on live TV a week before Christmas to deliver a live, video Christmas card to everyone he forgot to mail one to. Here's the transcript:
During the Christmas season, I received many Christmas cards. Unfortunately, because I was so busy, I didn't have time to send out any myself. So, if I could, I'd like to use this as my Christmas card to everyone who was kind enough to send one to me.[ puts Santa hat on his head and begins]
"Dear Friend, or Relative, or Business Associate. Merry Christmas, or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or Solstice, or Voodoo Day.
Boy, what a year it's been - me, with my acting, and, you doing whatever it is that you do. Thanks for the Christmas card, it was very beautiful, or humorous. I enjoyed the photo of your kid, or kids. Boy, he, or she, or they are really getting big. Have you seen our mutual friend, if we have one? Can you believe what he or she is up to? Boy, some people!
Has your son, or daughter, or sister, or brother, or husband, or wife still have that drug problem? All you can do is trust in God, or, if you prefer, voodoo.
How is Granny, or Nana, or Mimi, or Yaya? So so? Hey, how about the professional sports team that we both root for? They should fire, or rehire that manager of theirs. He's a character!
Well, gotta go. By the way, sorry about throwing up on your carpet that time, or times. I hope you receive many presents from Santa, or Hanukkah Guy, or the Voodoo Man.. and that the coming year is as good as, or better than, or nothing like the last year.
Love, Alec."
During the Christmas season, I received many Christmas cards. Unfortunately, because I was so busy, I didn't have time to send out any myself. So, if I could, I'd like to use this as my Christmas card to everyone who was kind enough to send one to me.[ puts Santa hat on his head and begins]
"Dear Friend, or Relative, or Business Associate. Merry Christmas, or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or Solstice, or Voodoo Day.
Boy, what a year it's been - me, with my acting, and, you doing whatever it is that you do. Thanks for the Christmas card, it was very beautiful, or humorous. I enjoyed the photo of your kid, or kids. Boy, he, or she, or they are really getting big. Have you seen our mutual friend, if we have one? Can you believe what he or she is up to? Boy, some people!
Has your son, or daughter, or sister, or brother, or husband, or wife still have that drug problem? All you can do is trust in God, or, if you prefer, voodoo.
How is Granny, or Nana, or Mimi, or Yaya? So so? Hey, how about the professional sports team that we both root for? They should fire, or rehire that manager of theirs. He's a character!
Well, gotta go. By the way, sorry about throwing up on your carpet that time, or times. I hope you receive many presents from Santa, or Hanukkah Guy, or the Voodoo Man.. and that the coming year is as good as, or better than, or nothing like the last year.
Love, Alec."
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