The Chicago Public Schools are now bribing children to get higher grades:
Up to 5,000 freshmen at 20 Chicago public high schools will get cash for good—and even average—grades as part of a new, Harvard-designed test program that city education leaders are rolling out Thursday.
Students will be measured every five weeks in math, English, social sciences, science and physical education. An A nets $50, a B equals $35 and a C still brings in $20. Students will get half the money upfront, with the remainder paid upon graduation. A straight-A student could earn up to $4,000 by the end of his or her sophomore year.
...
"It's a terrible idea, because you're getting people to do things for the wrong reasons," said Barry Schwartz, a Swarthmore College psychology professor who has written on the issue. "They'll do well in school, maybe, but they won't take any of it out with them. Instead of trying to cultivate an interest in learning, curiosity . . . you are just turning this into another job."
It may not be obvious, but bribery is force—coersion—robbing the behavior of any intrinsic value. Not to mention, any metric can be gamed, and with money on the line, the opportunities for corruption increase by orders of magnitude. Arguing points on a test will now have a financial stake, which changes the stakes of arguing points on a test dramatically. Once coersion exists in the system, it will be applied in both directions. Teachers and students have a naturally adversarial relationship already; this will make it much, much worse.
This is, in short, the stupidest idea I've ever encountered in public education. Our city will get exactly what it pays for with this program. It's just a pity the CPS doesn't get what that means.
Canada's Conservative government has called a snap election:
Prolonged speculation over whether Canada’s minority Conservative government would call an early election has ended with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s announcement that voters will go to the polls on October 14th. This is a full year ahead of the date Mr Harper proposed in legislation submitted after he assumed power in January.
...
This will be the third national election for Canada in just over four years, and highlights the difficulty recent governments have had in garnering majority support at the polls. Both the major parties had for months appeared wary of pushing for an early election until they had strong enough backing to win a majority. Until recently the Conservatives enjoyed a slim lead in opinion polls, allowing them to force the Liberals to back down in parliament. Some recent polls show both parties holding nearly equal popular support. The Tories have been damaged by a series of scandals that have tarnished their public image; the latest of these, a campaign-financing scandal, is currently being examined by a parliamentary committee. This has benefited the Liberals....
To some extent, I'm envious of the Canadian system. Last week no one knew they'd have an election this year, and before our third Presidential debate (and three weeks ahead of our own election), they'll either have an entirely new government or the Tories will have a mandate for five more years.
Do you think their campaign will be about patriotism, pigs, or POWs? No? Neither do I.
TPM Media gives you: the McCain-Palin Lipstick Pig:
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(I mean, someone had to, right?)
I can't help chuckling at a minor bit of low-level incompetence from McCain's speech last night. It's not even his fault, though I'm sure someone on the campaign staff might get an early winter vacation. Apparently, the building projected behind McCain during his speech was not, as he might have wished, Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, but Walter Reed Middle School in—no small irony—North Hollywood, Calif. And now the school has issued a statement (via TPM; emphasis in original):
It has been brought to the school's attention that a picture of the front of our school, Walter Reed Middle School, was used as a backdrop at the Republican National Convention. Permission to use the front of our school for the Republican National Convention was not given by our school nor is the use of our school's picture an endorsement of any political party or view.
(The working hypothesis is that a staffer Googled "Walter Reed" and punted.)
Good piece in the Chicago Tribune this morning analyzing the speech GOP Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin gave last night:
Some examples:
PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."
THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."
...
FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."
THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.
And then there was Rudy Giuliani's speech, about which I will defer to Talking Points Memo:
With Rudy's speech, to riff on the brilliance of the immortal Molly Ivins, I think I preferred this speech in the original German.
Come to think of it, perhaps the McCain campaign picked the wrong Palin. Perhaps they meant Michael?
Via Talking Points Memo, the McCain campaign has trouble explaining Gov. Palin's foreign-policy experience. Even CNN is fed up: Alaska bordering Russia, and Palin having "command" of the Alaska National Guard, are neither "foreign-policy experience" nor a combination of things we'd ever want to see taken to a logical conclusion. But here's the interview:
After Palin goes the way of Harriet Miers, perhaps "Fast Draw" McCain might vet the next candidate?
Excellent speech by former nominee John Kerry tonight. (Where was this guy in 2004?)
I'm overwhelmed, even though everyone knew it was coming, even though it's "just politics:" tonight, for the first time ever, the United States has a nominee for President who is not a white man.
I have a degree in U.S. history, so I know full well that many of the most important events in our past passed right by the people living through them. This one, though, this one happened on international TV, in real time, and everyone watching knew it was important.
The best part? That he's black doesn't really matter. He's the nominee on the merits. People will vote for him because he's qualified, he's competent, he's shrewd, he's cool-headed, he's smart, he's a good judge of advisers, and he's exactly what we desperately needed (but desperately didn't have) to guide us through the horror of September 2001. His skin color does not matter in any of that. And yet, incidentally, my party has nominated someone who doesn't look like the guys on the currency to be its standard-bearer. And it only took 220 years.
I can hardly wait for 68 days to cast my fourth[1], and most important, vote for Barack Obama: our next President.
[1] I voted for Obama for Democratic nominee to U.S. Senate, March 2004; U.S. Senate, November 2004; and Democratic Nominee for President, January 2008.
I admit, I missed HRC's speech, and I'm looking for it right now on YouTube. But so many bloggers are commenting on it right now that I am, as my dad would say, "taking a Pasadena."
Instead, I would like to highlight (via Talking Points Memo) a ruling today, in which a Federal judge denied Harriet Miers's and Josh Bolten's motions to avoid testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee. This is a non-trivial victory for the legislature over the executive, probably in the short term at least as important as the Democratic Convention. From Chairman John Conyers (D-MI):
Today's ruling clearly rejects the White House's efforts to run out the clock on the Committee's investigation of DOJ politicization this Congress. I am heartened that Judge Bates recognized that the public interest in this matter is best served by the furtherance of the Committee's investigation. ... The Committee intends to promptly schedule a hearing with Ms. Miers and stands ready as always to consider any reasonable offer of accommodation with the White House.
"Reasonable," in its plainest meaning, means that the White House will turn over the documents requested. We'll see.