Does this make sense?

Rules on non-compete agreements accept the sanctity of contracts, even when it hurts future income for workers who are unable to find new jobs:

Daniel McKinnon, who had been a hairstylist in Norwell, Mass., lost a court battle with his former employer who claimed that Mr. McKinnon had violated the terms of his agreement when he went to work at a nearby salon. Mr. McKinnon said that he did not think the original restriction — to wait at least 12 months before working at any salon in nearby towns — still applied because he had been fired after years of friction with the manager there. Shortly after being fired, he went to work at a nearby salon.

But a judge issued an injunction ordering him to stop working at his new employer.

“It was pretty lousy that you would take away someone’s livelihood like that,” said Mr. McKinnon, who for the following year lived off jobless benefits of $300 a week. “I almost lost my truck. I almost lost my apartment. Almost everything came sweeping out from under me.”

But now talk about teacher tenure and suddenly the potential for future economic losses is a compelling reason to break existing agreements:

In striking down several laws regarding tenure, seniority and other protections, the judge said there was compelling evidence of the harm inflicted on students by incompetent teachers.

"Indeed, it shocks the conscience," Treu said.

He cited an expert's finding that a single year with a grossly ineffective teacher costs a student $50,000 in potential lifetime earnings. 

No data is given on how many teachers are "grossly ineffective", how confounding by school neighborhood was handled, or whether the replacement of these teachers with somebody else would necessarily improve matters.  Notice how we don't show the same level of heightened concern over actual lost wages for real workers as we do about potential losses. 

Interesting to ponder. 

Charter vs. Charter?

Specifically big vs. little.

For a number of years now, there's been a growing but little discussed tension between the big chains of charter schools like KIPP and the individual neighborhood charters. It was often the small schools with close ties to parents that the industry pointed to, but their political clout was generally negligible.

So it was pretty much inevitable that, at some point, the big players would start aggressively acquiring market share held by other charters just as they had been acquiring that held by vulnerable public schools. All of this brings us, perhaps unsurprisingly, to New Jersey:

The Christie administration quietly told two charter schools over the last month that they must close, one of them among the most established in Newark and the other a brand-new school in Camden.

The first to be signed by acting commissioner David Hespe, the decisions were not publicly announced, but came in letters to each of the schools as they were finishing up the year. The schools must close by the end of June.

In both cases, the shutdown orders were largely due to student test scores below those in the host district, even if for just one year, and the lack of necessary steps to improve them, according to the letters sent by Hespe.

For the Greater Newark Charter School, opened in 2000 and in its 14th year, it may not have been wholly unexpected as the school had been on probation and a decision on its charter’s five-year renewal was delayed since March.

The leader of the City Invincible Charter School in Camden said it came as more of a surprise, as the school was only in its second year.

If that 'second year' part seems odd, just wait...  It gets better. As the Vice President on the Board of Trustees for City Invincible Charter School.points out:

First, we must not overlook the simple fact that this decision came two days before the 2014 NJASK testing began. The State did not even bother to see if our students’ scores have improved. This decision is entirely based off of a single set of data that comes from a test administered seven months into our first year of operation.
...
I just think it reeks of politics that they have suddenly decided to close our school in the very same year KIPP, Mastery, and Uncommon schools are set to open. Because there’s a dearth of facilities in the city that can serve as schools, you shouldn’t be surprised to see one of their banners hanging over our doors come September.

I haven't run across Mastery that often, but KIPP and Uncommon have been on my radar for a while, particularly their share practice of pumping up their metrics by brutally dumping their most vulnerable students. From Nashville:

One of the first things a visitor sees when stepping into Kipp Academy is a graph that shows how Kipp is outperforming Metro schools in every subject.

However, Kipp Academy is also one of the leaders in another stat that is not something to crow about.

When it comes to the net loss of students this year, charter schools are the top eight losers of students.

In fact, the only schools that have net losses of 10 to 33 percent are charter schools.

"We look at that attrition. We keep an eye on it, and we actually think about how we can bring that back in line with where we've been historically," said Kipp Principal Randy Dowell.

Dowell said Kipp's 18 percent attrition is unacceptable.

As I pointed out earlier, Dowell is being stunningly dishonest here. You simply don't get this level of attrition unless the administration wants it. Uncommon has been caught using similar strategies:

Tops on the list: Roxbury Preparatory Charter, a college prep academy for 5th-8th graders that is part of the Uncommon Schools network and sent home an Uncommonly high 56% of its students in 2012.

As I've said before, there are some very good independent charters out there with innovative programs and strong neighborhood ties. I wish them the best, but I advise them to watch their backs.

Pranks as natural experiments

Ken Levine, as previously mentioned, is an enormously accomplished writer and director of sitcoms going all the way back to MASH, but he started out in radio and still keeps a hand in. A few years ago he was co-hosting Dodger Talk with Josh Suchon on KABC, Los Angeles where part of his job was to deliver local traffic reports...

But I always wondered – was anybody actually listening to these traffic reports? One evening, late in the season, the Dodgers were in San Francisco and I was at the station preparing for my big minute. I was hanging out with Howard Hoffman, the production director, and I suggested a way to see if listeners paid any attention. He laughed and said, “you wouldn’t dare.” (This is where that paragraph on pranks pays off.) I gave him a sly smile and headed for my booth.

I opened the report by saying, “If you’re going to the Dodger game tonight, there’s a fifteen minute delay on the Golden Gate Bridge, the 880-Nimitz in the east bay reports slow and go from Concord…”

I just gave the San Francisco traffic report. Super straight, as if this were a San Francisco station. And I tagged it with the Sprint commercial.

Howard came into the booth hysterical. Now we waited to see how many phone calls we got. This was 6:45 in the evening, during the peak afternoon commute.

So how many did we get? I bet you’re ahead of me. That’s right. None. Not a single one. Zero. The big goose egg. No one from the station ever called me. No one from the Dodgers. Nothing. 

The following year there was no traffic. I hope [the sponsor] Sprint took that money and used it to buy another repeater tower.

Perhaps it would have been different with a home game, but these results do look conclusive. This got me wondering. I can imagine situations where a prank might lead to useful data. I wonder if anyone knows of any actual examples other than this one.

Weekend blogging -- famous but underrated

I had originally planned this post as a Twilight Zone Memorial Day marathon, then something more topical came along. Of course, in the blogosphere nothing ever really goes away. Here are a few of the episodes that rank high on my personal list but which don't seem to get a lot of press.

"When the Sky Was Opened" creeped me out in a way that's hard to explain. It also, like many of the episodes included here,  features a remarkable performance from a wonderful but under-recognized actor (in this case Charles Aidman).

"Two" is a nearly perfect, fantastically economical love story. Up until 1970 or so, Charles Bronson could do no wrong. From the Magnificent Seven to Once Upon a Time in the West, he was, for my money the most interesting star of the decade. Add in Elizabeth Montgomery's amazing smile and that wonderful final shot from writer/director Montgomery Pittman...

"Once Upon a Time" has Buster. Nothing more needs to be said.

 "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank," and "Jess-Belle" feature another actor who needs to be better remembered, or at least remembered for better things, James Best.

"Miniature" and "Nothing in the Dark" are fine episodes featuring excellent turns by future stars (particularly Duvall). "The Bard" is a weaker entry on the whole but a must for Burt Reynolds fans.

"Occurrence" won a well-deserved Oscar.

"The Hunt" What can I say? Us Arkansas folk have always been real proud of Arthur.

Finally, "The Grave" featuring, get this, Lee Marvin, James Best,Lee Van Cleef, and Strother Martin. Another outstanding episode from writer/director Montgomery Pittman.














































The Grave

It never rains but pours

I have been silent lately.  My leg now has two open ulcers plus an infected surgical wound mid-way up the calf.  Antibiotics held things in check, but things went poorly when they stopped. 

So I have been quite under the weather and posting will likely stay light for a while. 

Mark has been doing amazing content in the interim

Agricultural round-up

These are bigger stories than their coverage indicates and when I get some time, I plan on tying them in with some ongoing threads (there's definitely a ddulite angle here).

Scientists Crack Sheep Genome, Shining Spotlight On Rumen Evolution And Lipid Metabolism

Shenzhen, June 5, 2014--- The latest study, led by scientists from Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, BGI and other institutes, presents a high-quality sheep genome and reveals genomic and transcriptomic events that may be associated with rumen evolution and lipid metabolism that have relevance to both diet and wool. The work was published online today in Science.

Sheep are ruminants with a complex, 4-compartmented "stomach", the largest compartment is the rumen, which is thought to have evolved around 35-40 million years ago, and has the ability of converting the ligno-cellulose rich plant materials into animal protein. Wool is the most economic feature of the sheep, while the synthesis of wool is supposed to be linked to fatty acid metabolism. The genome data yielded in this study will lead to a better understanding of all those unusual evolution traits of sheep.

3,000 rice genome sequences made publicly available on World Hunger Day

The open-access, open-data journal GigaScience (published by BGI and Biomed Central), announces today the publication of an article on the genome sequencing of 3000 rice strains along with the release of this entire dataset in a citable format in journal's affiliated open-access database, GigaDB. The publication and release of this enormous data set (which quadruples the current amount of publicly available rice sequence data) coincides with World Hunger Day to highlight one of the primary goals of this project— to develop resources that will aid in improving global food security, especially in the poorest areas of the world. This work is the completion of stage one of the 3000 Rice Genomes Project, a collaborative effort made up of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), and BGI, and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.

With more than 1/8th of the world's population living in extreme hunger and poverty, and an every-increasing world population (estimated to reach 9.6 billion by 2050), there is a huge need to create new resources to improve crop yield, reduce the impact of agricultural practices on the environment, and develop food crops that are of high yield and nutrition and can grow successfully in environments stressed by drought, pests, diseases, or poor soil quality. While rice research has greatly advanced since the completion of the first high-quality rice genome sequence in 2005, there has been limited change in breeding practices that are important for producing improved and better adapted rice strains.

The 3000 Rice Genomes Project provides a major step forward for addressing these challenges by creating and releasing an extensive amount of genetic information that can ultimately be applied to intelligent breeding practices, which take advantage of the natural variation between different plant strains and information on the genetic mechanisms that underlie these traits to select strains for breeding that will be more successful in producing hybrid strains with characteristics that are highly suited for growing successfully in different environments.

For a bit of context, here are some relevant previous posts.

First on the way media covers agricultural research:

Really not that damned funny (Insert Dowd joke here)

Earmarks and Agricultural Research

Sure it saved us twenty billion, but it sounds funny


and on agriculture in general

Back on the subject of agricultural research

How are genetically engineered crops like AAA rated structured bonds?

And one I still need to get to

Seed saving: An alternative to industrial agriculture in India

The near miss effect -- what compulsive gamblers and tech reporters have in common

A few days ago I posted a bit of a rant about how excited tech reporters got over a Google press release about the company's driverless car. The problem was that, based on the details available in the reports, there didn't seem to be any significant indications of increased functionality.

Of course, reporters have a strong incentive to see signs of progress -- "just around the corner" sells better than "don't get your hopes up" -- but I think this eagerness has more than one cause (most things do) and I wonder if one of those factors might have something to do with the near-miss effect as described in this memorable story from This American Life:

Sarah Koenig

Habib and especially Dixon have spent a long time studying what's called the near-miss effect. In slot machines, a near miss is just what it sounds like. It's when, say, two cherries line up on the payoff line, and then the third is about to come but stops just short or just past the payoff line.

...

Sarah Koenig

In 2006, Dixon teamed up with Habib to see if they could figure out what was happening to people neurologically when they saw near misses. They scanned the brains of 22 gamblers-- 11 addicted, or what they called pathological gamblers, and 11 non-pathological gamblers-- as all these people watch near misses on slot machine displays.

The results surprised them. Because while both addicted and non-addicted gamblers said the near misses felt more like wins, their brains said something different. Here's Reza Habib.

Reza Habib

What you see in the non-pathological gamblers is that the regions that are activated for losses, those same regions tend to be also activated for near misses. And so the brain, at least, processes these near misses in the same way that it processes losses in the non-pathological gamblers. In pathological gamblers, the same regions that are activated for wins are also activated for near misses.

And so these include regions such as the amygdala, which is a region involved in emotional processing, as well as parts of the brain stem which are involved in reward and dopamine function, which is part of the reward system. So the pathological gamblers, their brains, at least, are responding to these near misses in the same way that they respond to wins.

Mark Dixon

This is Mark again. And one of the effects of this, or the implications of these data, are that a pathological gambler going into the casino who's actually losing, his brain is firing like he's winning. Disturbing, isn't it.

Sarah Koenig

Yeah. It's crazy.

Mark Dixon

Oh, it's way crazy. And so you are experiencing those same sensations as a win when you're not winning.

Just as casinos are very good at eliciting the reactions associated with winning even when very little winning is going on, companies like Apple and Google have become very good at eliciting the reactions associated with technological progress even when the technology is advancing little and sometimes not at all. In this case, Google assumed correctly that, by showing journalists a prototype that looked different but apparently did nothing new, the reporters would react as if they had seen an advance in the technology. They respond to these meaningless press conferences in much the same way as a pathological gambler responds to two cherries out of three.

If anything, the shift to custom-made, low-speed cars would seem to be a sign of trouble. Google's stated goal is to release this technology to manufacturers in 2018. Whenever you're designing complex systems that have to work with complex systems designed by others, compatibility is usually more than half the battle. I would therefore expect some of the most daunting engineering challenges to come from getting Google's technology to work smoothly with a wide range of makes and models. The decision to go from road testing Toyota Priuses ('Prii' believe it or not) and Audi TTs to track testing what are basically go-carts does not make the four year goal look more likely.

What happens if that deadline isn't met? I suspect it will still be business as usual. Google has proven that merely symbolic progress or, failing even that, just bringing the subject up is enough to create the desired effect of public perception. My guess is that the only real deadline is beating GM, Mercedes-Benz, or Nissan or any of the other companies that have equally gifted engineers working on these problems (but with less gifted PR departments to promote them).

"[N]o revenue, no patents, no trademarks, no manufacturing facilities, and no experience"

Most of the coverage of this story has been focused, understandably, on the political side, but part I find much more interesting is the rise, if you could call it that, of Global Digital Solutions Inc. We are, by this point, accustomed to people pouring money into companies with incomplete and/or unrealistic business plans, but this takes it to an entirely new level. As far as I can, the people running this seem to have no intention of actually being a business. They issue press releases, give big checks to  prominent people and rake in tens of millions of dollars of investor money. They don't even bother to make a convincing show of trying to actually do anything productive.

If we were talking about some kind of fly-under-the-radar, boiler-room pump and dump, this would be about what I might expect, but this has been going on for years in an aggressively high profile manner. You have to wonder how long it would have taken people to notice it if hadn't hired a soon-to-be candidate in a highly covered Senate race.

This also raises some interesting questions about effenciency in the darker corners of the market. GDS was not a particularly successful stock, but it was almost certainly more successful than it deserved to be.

An obscure company in West Palm Beach that markets itself as a firearms manufacturer made a splashy announcement last summer: It was appointing Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator, to its advisory board.

Not revealed at the time was what Brown received in exchange for lending his name to the venture. But a report the company made to the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, which has not been previously made public, shows that Brown received stock that was worth $1.3 million at the time. Its value has declined considerably since then, as the stock price has fallen by half.

Global Digital Solutions Inc. does not yet sell or make guns. It has no revenue, no patents, no trademarks, no manufacturing facilities, and no experience developing weapons, according to its most recent corporate filings.

It was founded as a beauty supply company in New Jersey — selling hair spray, conditioners, and shampoos, before reinventing itself as a wireless data firm from California and then again last year as a South Florida-based firearms maker and gun technology innovator.

It is the kind of company, with scant assets and a shifting business model, that some financial professionals warn investors to steer away from.

The company, instead of selling firearms, has churned out press releases to attract small investors, including the one about Brown joining the firm, and issued millions of shares of stock to fund its operations. Shares closed at 46 cents on the OTCQB Marketplace on Friday.

During a brief encounter after a campaign event in Hopkinton, N.H., on Saturday, Brown declined to answer questions about his involvement with the company or the level of scrutiny he applied to its business methods before agreeing to associate himself with it. He referred to a campaign statement given to the Globe Friday.

“GDSI is a start-up company that does not have significant operations at this point,” his communications director Elizabeth Guyton said in an e-mail. “Scott Brown has an advisory role but he is not involved in the day to day management or decisions of the company.”

Accountants said in interviews that Global Digital’s filings raise a number of warning signs for investors, including its varying business model and lack of actual products. The firm reported it has four employees, $271,776 in cash and had $19.7 million in losses as of March 31.
...
Barry R. Goldsmith, a former lead lawyer for the SEC and chief of enforcement for the National Association of Securities Dealers, said the company’s actions raise a number of issues “that I think a regulator would look at,” including its bold press releases and the company’s quick transitions in its business model.
...
Many congressional candidates and former officials have served on corporate boards. Brown’s involvement as “senior adviser’’ in Global Digital raises questions about the amount of work he is doing for the company in exchange for his large equity stake and the amount of attention he gave to the company’s practices before lending it his name and prestige.

The company’s chief executive officer and president, Richard J. Sullivan, declined an interview request. But Sullivan provided a statement saying the company was attracted to Brown because of his experience in the military and on the Armed Services and Homeland Security committees in the Senate.

Sullivan said the company issues press releases about possible acquisitions because it is required by regulators to disclose strategic plans.

“The GDSI executive management team has a strong record of success in growing and acquiring fast-growing technology companies,” he added, directing further inquiries to the company website.

Global Digital lists a prestigious address in West Palm Beach with a majestic view of the water and the Island of Palm Beach as its headquarters.

A reporter who went to the address Friday found the company was not listed on any building directory. A receptionist in the suite listed as the company’s address told a reporter: “They’re not here. It’s by appointment only.”

The building directory lists another company at the suite: HQ Global Workplaces, which advertises that it provides clients with an address and access to furnished conference rooms as needed. Global Digital reported in a securities filing that it signed a 12-month lease last year for a “virtual office” in West Palm Beach for $299 per month.

Global Digital generated a wave of publicity after Brown agreed to join the advisory board Sept. 9. In exchange for his involvement, Brown received 1.5 million shares of company stock, worth about $1.3 million when they were granted, or about $690,000 at today’s prices, according to the company’s quarterly report filed on May 9.

The shares were scheduled to vest between January and September of this year, allowing Brown to sell them. His picture is prominently featured on the company’s website as an adviser.

The company’s stock price did not move from 88 cents a share on the day Brown’s appointment was announced, and it has declined by 48 percent in the months since.

Brown’s campaign said he has yet to sell any of the stock.

Brown is not the only high-profile politician the company has recruited to boost its profile. Global Digital announced in April 2013 that Jennifer Carroll had become a senior adviser, a month after she resigned as Florida’s lieutenant governor after investigators questioned her about her involvement in an Internet sweepstakes operation.

Carroll is now listed as the company’s “future president and chief operating officer.”

In addition, more than a half-dozen penny stock newsletters reported they were paid by an investor relations firm to promote Global Digital in 2012 — when it was still focused on telecommunications — including $20,000 to ClubPennyStocks Network and $10,000 to PennyStockExplosion.com, according to OTC Dynamics Inc., a Winnipeg, Manitoba, firm that tracks penny stock promotions.

To become publicly traded as an over-the-counter stock, so it could raise money from small investors, Global Digital merged in 2004 with a struggling cosmetics company called Creative Beauty Supply Inc.

The company then repositioned itself as a telecommunications firm before pivoting again last year to say it would become a firearms manufacturer, a security and technology company, and a leader in “cyber-related, culturally attuned social consulting.”

It has also drawn attention with announced plans for several major acquisitions that it never consummated. An announcement in March that it intended to buy Remington Arms Co. LLC, one of the world’s largest gun manufacturers, for more than $1 billion was greeted with derision by Remington and others in the industry, who dismissed it. Global Digital’s stock value is only about $45 million.

...

It also announced it had signed a letter of intent to buy another tiny Florida firm, Cool Sound Industries Inc., saying its sound-wave technology had “potential for game-changing defense-related and commercial applications.” However, there is no indication in its securities filings that it completed the deal.

The company said in a January press release that it would soon unveil digital technology to track and lock guns. So called “smart-gun” technology has been the subject of widespread interest in recent years after mass shootings. But Global Digital’s news release did not say how the technology works, when it will be available or how much it would cost.

One of Brown’s fellow members of the advisory board, Richard J. Feldman, said he was asked to join at the end of April, a week after he called Sullivan to express interest. Feldman, who said he is a former gun lobbyist based in New Hampshire, said he had lunch with Sullivan and the chairman of the advisory board, but knows of no scheduled meetings with the full advisory board and has never seen the company’s office.

“There’s no production that I’m aware of so that makes perfect sense,” he said. “It’s at the beginning stages of putting it together.”

Feldman said he did not know about the company’s history or much about its business plan, other than the expectation that it will use new technology and attempt to buy Remington. He said he has never met Brown.

Flawed analogy watch -- Comcast edition

As if there weren't enough to dislike about this deal, we now have the CEO talking to us like we're morons.

Faced with difficult questions about his company’s pending takeover of Time Warner Cable — which would combine the two largest cable internet providers in the U.S. into a company consumers will likely hate twice as much — Comcast CEO Brian Roberts made one thing very clear: his company is determined to sit directly in the middle of the tech world. ...

That means it wants to preserve a gatekeeper role. In a series of analogies, Roberts likened his company’s role to that of a postmaster, pointing out that Netflix pays hundreds of millions of dollars to mail DVDs to its customers but now expects to be able to deliver the same content over the internet for free.

“They would like it all to be free. I would like to not have to pay for cable boxes,” he said. Delivering bits over a pipe seems just a wee bit more cost-effective than paying the energy and labor costs of physical distribution, but Roberts didn’t get into that.

Where to start...

The most common model for deliveries is one where the sender pays the cost of shipping. A less common, but not unheard of model is for the receiver to cover the cost on delivery ("postage due"). ISPs basically operate under something similar to the second model. The receiver pays to get the digital packages, and pays more to get larger packages or to get them faster.

Roberts is proposing a model where both the sender and the receiver pay, which he thinks he can get away with because there is very little competition in the industry and because, based on this quote, he doesn't seem to think we're very bright.

The sad part is this doesn't significantly lower my opinion of Matt Miller

Joseph and I try to avoid the overtly partisan at this blog. We frequently endorse Democratic positions but that has a lot to do with the current state of the GOP, which recently disavowed most of their best ideas because they saw that some Democrats liked them. When we do like an idea that Republicans still hold like expanding nuclear power, both Joseph and I have been fairly open with our support.

We certainly aren't in the business of endorsing candidates but I'm about to come damned close to endorsing anyone in today's primary who isn't named Matt Miller.

From Lee Fang via Brad DeLong:

Ethics forms filed by Miller to the House Clerk’s office, a standard procedure for any candidate for Congress, reveal that Miller received $239,099 from Burson-Marsteller, the influence and public relations firm, in 2013.

The ethics forms show a laundry list of other corporate clients, including American Express, General Electric, Linder & Associates, RLM Finsbury, and Wal-Mart. The New York Times’ Mark Leibovich, in his write up of the race, described Miller as a former consultant to McKinsey & Company. The ethics forms show that Miller continued to receive a salary at the firm up until announcing his run: $295,927 in 2013 and 2014, and $318,721 in the previous year, 2012. Many of Miller’s clients continued to pay him up until he announced his candidacy, including RLM Finsbury, which bills itself as a public affairs firm that helps influence lawmakers and regulators. RLM Finsbury says Miller left the firm as he launched his campaign.
...
The many corporate consultancy gigs held by Miller may cast his policy and pundit positions into question. For instance, when Miller penned a column for the Post defending corporations that take full advantage of the tax code to dodge paying billions in corporate income taxes, he did not disclose at the time that he was being paid by GE, a company that has become a symbol of this problem. Miller has endorsed cutting entitlement programs such as Social Security. As PR Week reported, Miller’s Burson-Marsteller was retained by billionaire Pete Peterson’s Fix the Debt campaign to help advocate for spending cuts to reduce the national debt.

Miller, in response to a query from Republic Report, says he has “always kept my editors and producers at my various outlets informed about my business activities, and have routinely made disclosures on air or in print where a reader or audience member should know of such work to avoid any conflict.” On KCRW radio, where Miller has hosted the popular show “Left, Right, and Center,” Miller says he has mentioned on air that he is an advisor to GE chief executive Jeffrey Immelt.  ”I advised on strategy, policy and communications, and helped lead work on two reports issued by McKinsey’s education practice on the achievement gap and on elevating the teaching profession in the US. At Burson, I advised clients on external communications and reputation matters, and helped with client development,” Miller says.

For me, Miller has long been among the worst of the professional centrists, eagerly jumping on any passing bandwagon that conventional wisdom has deemed sensible. What I did not realize how often he was getting fat checks to take those opinions.

I have to admit that I was caught off guard by the McKinsey/ed reform connection, not because it was unbelievable but because it seemed almost too apt to be true. I've already discussed McKinsey from the David Coleman side while Joseph has talked about the company's comical health care study. Here's Barry Ritholtz on McKinsey's overall record and culture:

McKinsey, the global consulting firm, has created dubious strategies for all manners of companies ranging from Enron to General Electric. Indeed, where ever there has been a financial disaster in the world, if you look around, somewhere in the background, McKinsey & Co. is nearby.

That’s a pretty significant accusation. But it is bore out by the track record of the firm. Some of the more questionable strategies of McKinsey:

• Advocating side pockets and off balance sheet accounting to Enron, it became known as “the firm that built Enron” (Guardian, BusinessWeek)

• Argued that NY was losing Derivative business to London, and should more aggressively pursue derivative underwriting  (Investment Dealers’ Digest)

• General Electric lost over $1 billion after following McKinsey’s advice in 2007 — just before the financial crisis hit. (The Ledger)

• Advising AT&T (Bell Labs invented cellphones) that there wasn’t much future to mobile phones (WaPo)

• Allstate reduced legitimate Auto claims payouts in a McK&Co strategem (Bloomberg, CNN NLB)

• Swissair went into bankruptcy after implementing a McKinsey strategy (BusinessWeek)

• British railway company Railtrack was advised to “reduce spending on infrastructure” — leading to a number of fatal accidents, and a subsequent collapse of Railtrack. (Property Week, the Independent)

No consulting firm that has been around as long as McKinsey has a blemish free record. But the total number of clusterf**ks and McKinsey foibles they are associated with goes on and on.

The question of today goes beyond the illegal insider trading of their former managing director — what is it about McKinsey that allows them to give some very awful, legally questionable advice, and yet escape blame?

Probably the same way a journalist does it and manages to keep his reputation.

When it comes to technology journalism, reports of progress don't have to be directionally accurate

First the disclaimer: I have a number of friends and relatives who, for reasons of age or vision, do not or cannot drive. For these people, a self-driving car would be a tremendous, life-changing technology. That reason alone more than justifies the time and money going into this research.

Still, as eager as I am to see this realized, I am completely sick of the Pavlovian coverage it invariably generates. Every year or so, Google calls a press conference and the tech reporters start to salivate. This latest example is particularly embarrassing:

Whether we like it or not, self-driving cars are coming. Soon. Perhaps sooner than we may think. Research and development by Google has been going on for some time, but now the technology giant has revealed its latest project: its own self-driving car prototype. In the past, Google used the Toyota Prius and Audi TT as the test bed for this technology. Its latest prototype is just a two-seater and has a top speed of only 25 mph.

There is no steering wheel, gas or brake pedals, just a display screen showing the planned route and buttons to start and stop. The interior is limited to two seats with seatbelts and a space for passenger’s belongings.

I apologize for another ddulite tirade but in commercial and public policy discussions, technology needs to be evaluated in terms of functionality and costs. Being more advanced means doing more and, if possible, doing it for less. At least based on the short version you get in most news stories, Google's new approach represents a far less technologically ambitious project. Compared with their earlier prototypes, their current cars have more limited functionality, less compatibility and are constrained to a very low speed.

That's not to say that Google isn't making progress (I'm sure they are) nor an I saying that focusing on this less ambitious approach won't, in the long run, actually lead to faster progress (we often end up getting more done when we don't try to do too much too soon). It is, however, difficult to see how, in and of itself, switching over to prototypes that require customized cars and which simply avoid the thorny problem of going from automated to manual and back again suggests an advance.. .

Just to be clear, the point of this post isn't to criticize Google or its X lab. First because, barring strong evidence to the contrary, I'm going to assume these are smart people who know what they're doing and second because, even if I doubted their competence, I wouldn't be qualified to discuss what they were doing wrong.

All I know, as the saying goes, is what I read in the papers, but that's the problem. The story I read doesn't seem to support the conclusions the reporters drew.

Weekend blogging: before the man with no name, there was...

My first thought on first seeing Yojimbo years ago was that Kurosawa had been watching a lot of spaghetti westerns. Then I remember which came first...

This time it's different

Adriene Hill had a strangely schizophrenic story yesterday (CLASSROOM TECH: A HISTORY OF HYPE AND DISAPPOINTMENT). It came with the ominous title Classroom Tech: a History of Hype and Disappointment and the first half lived up to the claim:

That’s been the story of technology in the classroom, pretty much from the start. Great hope, ambition, and expense. Followed by disappointment.

Back in 1922, for instance, Thomas Edison thought he'd figured out the future of education.

“I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our education system,” he said, according to Larry Cuban's  Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920, “and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.”

“Edison was a better inventor than prognosticator,” said Robert Reiser, Associate Dean for Research in the College of Education at Florida State University.

Films fizzled out. They were expensive. Projectors were unreliable. It was hard to find the right film for the right class.

Enter radio.

School boards and universities, even commercial networks like CBS and NBC, poured money into creating classroom broadcasts,  or  “textbooks of the air.” Then, said Reiser, “the enthusiasm died out.”

Next up were “teaching machines” with names like Cyclo Teacher, Instructocard, and the Edumator.

One of the best known was created by psychologist BF Skinner, in 1954. Here he is explaining the devices.

According to the 1962 book Teaching Machines and Programmed Learning, there were dozens of companies that made these devices in the early 60s.

Turns out buttons and levers weren’t a great way to learn.

Which brings us to television.

TV combined sight and sound, and could bring live events — like space missions — right into the classroom. It was also seen as one answer to the teacher shortage. The money poured in. The Ford Foundation invested millions into programming, according to Cuban's book. The federal government also pitched in cash. By 1971 more than $100 million had been poured into educational TV.

Again, the same story. “We see one medium after another coming along, a lot of enthusiasm for that medium, followed by disappointment in the extent to which that medium changed the nature of the instruction taking place in classrooms,” said Reiser.

So, when computers exploded into classrooms  in the early 80s, with basic video games like Oregon Trail.

And when, as Todd Oppenheimer writes in The Flickering Mind, the numbers of computers tripled between 1980 and 1982, and tripled again by 1984.

And when Time magazine ran a cover story called “Here Come the Microkids,” in 1982. Educators were skeptical.

At this point, for no apparent reason, the tone shifts radically.

But now, some are reconsidering. Maybe this time is different.

and

“We’re on the cusp now of that big revolution,” said Themistocles Sparangis, chief technology director at Los Angeles Unified School District. LA Unified has bet big on tech--a billion dollars big-- to give every student an iPad.

It turns out that Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy, who has a rather cozy relationship with Apple, paid more than he had to for those iPads and way more than he would have if other tablet makers had been allowed to bid. Furthermore, they didn't work as promised (particularly not the firewall) and -- here's the part that jumps out for me -- the team that put together the proposal didn't check the specs closely enough and later discovered the district had to come up with an additional $38 million for keyboards.

In past, I've used the term ddulites to describe people who are irrationally enamored with technology but who don't get the subtleties of thinking in terms of functionality. The LAUSD's iPad misadventure is a perfect example of the damage this approach can cause.

I firmly believe that educational technology can do great things, but the first step in achieving that potential requires keeping people like Deasy and Sparangis out of the process.

Bookable, readily bookable, semi-bookable, ebookable

While we're on the subject, Jeremy Kilpatrick of the University of Georgia has an interesting eye-witness take on the math reforms of the post Sputnik era. Check out the whole thing if you get a chance, but for now I'd like to focus on one section:

Lesson Two: Mathematical thinking is not bookable.

"Bookable" is a term used by publishers to describe the capability of a concept or mental process to be captured in print in a form that teachers will accept and can use. Many of the new math projects concentrated on bringing about reform primarily through the production of innovative materials. In particular, by providing sample textbooks for mathematics courses, the SMSG attempted to influence the commercial textbook publishing process, which would presumably then change how mathematics was taught. The SMSG author teams, by providing fewer problems for students to work, expected that those problems would be treated by teachers in greater depth and detail. The problem-solving process, however, proved not to be bookable. Books are not good at handling tentative hypotheses, erroneous formulations, blind alleys, or partial solutions. Teachers misunderstood what they were to do and called for more problems instead.

Max Beberman, in the new math materials he designed for the University of Illinois Committee on School Mathematics, attempted to incorporate into many lessons what he called guided discovery. Students would be led to see patterns in mathematical expressions and thus to arrive at generalizations that would not need to be made explicit in the materials (until a later lesson). The materials apparently worked well when restricted to teachers who had been trained in their use. When they were later published in the form of commercial textbooks, however, the guided discovery feature was greatly attenuated in order to capture a larger market.

Several recent curriculum projects have run into the same phenomenon. When efforts are made to encourage students to think about mathematical ideas rather than having them enshrined in a text, teachers who are not familiar with how those ideas might be handled criticize the books as incomplete and unsatisfactory. Textbooks are expected to contain authoritative rules, definitions, theorems, and solutions. Consequently, asking students to think about and formulate their own versions of these things rather than providing them ready-made can make a textbook unusable for many teachers.

There's an important point here but I don't think Kilpatrick quite nails it. For starters, speaking as someone who has recently been working with a number of students coming of different courses, grades and schools, I can attest that being familiar with the ideas doesn't always help and sometimes hurts (see Feynman for details). Until you've done it, you have no idea how distracting it can be to teach out of a text where the authors don't really understand the material.

In order to get get the concept into more usable form, let's introduce a couple of subcategories:

Semi-bookable.  These are concepts or mental processes that can be partly but not entirely captured in print in a form that teachers will accept and can use. For example, lots of people teach themselves a foreign language from a book, but the process is almost always supplemented by conversing and by listening to live or recorded speakers;

Readily bookable. Some ideas and processes are difficult to convey in print, either because they can be hard to express or because most textbook authors have a weak grasp of them and miss the subtleties. Feynman's critique hit this point heavily;

Ebookable. An idea or process that becomes much more readily or completely bookable with the introduction of other media.

I'll come back to this later, particularly with regard to why attempts to incorporate Pólya into math textbooks often go so badly.

What exactly are the stakes?

I want to be careful how I frame this, partly because it's a big, complicated question and partly because it would be easy to imply an extreme position that I do not hold.

All that said, there's a thought that's been nagging at me for years, particularly since I've been digging into the education reform debate. Over the Twentieth Century, America has swung from one pedagogical and curricular extreme to another. The data from these initiatives are confusing and inconclusive when we look at the various metrics we use to capture educational performance, but when we pull back and look at two of the big objectives we want the policies to accomplish, economic growth.and technological progress, it's difficult to see a clear relationship between how and what we teach kids and how well they do.

This table (from A Brief History of American K-12 Mathematics Education in the 20th Century by David Klein) really brought this home for me. One of the big and not entirely unreasonable drivers of the reaction to Sputnik was the belief that we had been neglecting math and science.

Percentages of U.S. High School Students Enrolled in Various Courses

School Year	Algebra	Geometry	Trigonometry
1909 to 1910	56.9%	30.9%	1.9%
1914 to 1915	48.8%	26.5%	1.5%
1921 to 1922	40.2%	22.7%	1.5%
1927 to 1928	35.2%	19.8%	1.3%
1933 to 1934	30.4%	17.1%	1.3%
1948 to 1949	26.8%	12.8%	2.0%
1952 to 1953	24.6%	11.6%	1.7%
1954 to 1955	24.8%	11.4%	2.6%

It has become fairly standard to use the number of and enrollment in advanced course as a measure of a school's quality. By this standard, American schools weren't just bad, they were horrible and they had been in steady decline for half a century. Looking at the numbers for the Thirties and Forties, this generation would appear to be woefully ill-prepared to deal with the STEM-heavy world of the late Twentieth Century, but of course they weren't. The students who graduated high school in the quarter century preceding Sputnik were responsible for an incredible period of across-the-board advances.

From  Dewey Progressivism to New Math to Back-to-Basics to the modern reform movement, we have applied all sorts of theories to our kids' education. I'm sure that, if we thought through the problem, sharpened our analytic tools and devoted adequate resources to the question,  we could definitively say that for a given student and a given goal a certain approach is best.

I just wondering how big the magnitude of those differences will be compared to the impact of other public policy developments.