Mike Falick's Blog

Here's a Website that will Give You Very Interesting Information About Your Birthday

Day of Birth, based in the United Kingdom, describes its purpose as follows:

This site basically tells you the day of the week that you were born on. It also tells you other pointless but fun things such as: your star sign, how old you are, what season you were born in, how long until your next birthday, and how many days/hours/seconds you have been alive (assuming 12:00 midnight so the last two are approximations only). The site also provides links to other websites, so you can find more information such as famous people or events that share your birthday.

I learned that I was born on a Thursday, and that I am 5,377 days or 369,050 hours or 1,328,581,761 seconds old, and that on my birthday in 1620, the Mayflower Compact was signed (The Mayflower Compact was signed by the 41 men on the Mayflower when they landed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod. The compact called for "just and equal laws.)

Calendar Survey Part 2: Vote on Your Choice for the 2008-2009 Calendar Now Thru January 11, 2008

The Spring Branch ISD Calendar Committee is re-surveying the community on the 2008-2009 calendar.  The online survey will continue until January 11, 2008.

More information is available below and on the District's Calendar Committee website.

From the District's website:

(En Español)

SBISD Calendar Committee Seeks Your Opinion
Final Calendar Survey
Vote for Your Calendar Choice!
Survey will be posted until January 11

Dear Staff and Community Members,

The SBISD Calendar Committee has studied the recent calendar survey results submitted by nearly 2000 staff and parents. The results confirm that most individuals do not like either of the proposed calendars. As a result, the Calendar Committee has investigated other options and seeks your feedback on two additional draft calendars. The committee has further recommended that only a 2008-2009 calendar be considered at this time.

As you consider these calendars, please remember that local control over school start dates was taken away from Texas school districts when the State Legislature mandated that school start no earlier than the fourth Monday in August. This law was passed in May, 2006 due to pressure from the tourism lobby. If you are unhappy with the impact of the mandated start date, please contact your legislators.  Find your legislators’ contact information at http://www.springbranchisd.com/admin/gov/represents.htm.

The new survey includes Draft 1, the winning choice in the first survey. Based on the results of the new survey, in early January the Committee will make its final recommendation.  I, in turn, will make a final recommendation to the Board of Trustees at their January meeting. The online survey will run from December 17 – January 11th.

Please review the calendar comparisons below prior to voting on your calendar of choice. For more information, please email [email protected] .

Sincerely,
Duncan F. Klussmann, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools

.................................................................................................................

Click Here for Calendar Comparisons

Calendar Choices

Draft 1 Draft 2 Draft 3

Vote here

Which Jobs Make People the Happiest?

Time magazine has posted a website where you can see how happy people are in a very wide variety of jobs.  Teachers are very close to the top (happiest), even happier than lawyers.

New Study Shows Students Who Pull All-Nighters Have Lower GPAs than Well-Rested Students

Here's an interesting article I came across this morning that shows that pulling an all-nighter is not a good way to get better grades.  Seems pretty obvious.......
___________________________________

Students who pull all-nighters have lower GPAs than students who sleep at night, study finds

6:13 a.m. December 14, 2007

ALBANY, N.Y. – Students who rely on all-nighters to bring up their grades might want to sleep on that strategy: A new survey says those who never study all night have slightly higher GPAs than those who do.

A survey of 120 students at St. Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college in northern New York, found that students who have never pulled an all-nighter have average GPAs of 3.2, compared to 2.95 for those who have. The study, by assistant professor of psychology Pamela Thacher, is to be included in the January issue of Behavioral Sleep Medicine.

“It's not a big difference, but it's pretty striking,” Thacher said. “I am primarily a sleep researcher and I know nobody thinks clearly at 4 in the morning. You think you do, but you can't.”

A second study by Thacher, a clinical psychologist, had “extremely similar” results showing lower grades among the sleep skippers.

Many college students, of course, have inadequate or irregular sleep, for reasons ranging from excessive caffeine to poor time management.

Prav Chatani, a St. Lawrence sophomore who wasn't involved in either study, said the findings made sense. The neuroscience major has been pulling fewer all-nighters, but recently stayed up all night to prepare for an organic chemistry test and a neuroscience presentation, he said.

He had difficulty remembering some of the material he studied around 4 or 5 in the morning.

“A lot of students were under the impression all-nighters were a very useful tool for accomplishing work, that caffeine intake was very useful in meeting deadlines and stuff like that,” said Chatani, who had a 3.4 GPA last semester and doesn't expect to do too badly this semester, either.

Dr. Howard Weiss, a physician at St. Peter's Sleep Center in Albany, said the study results make sense.

“Certainly that data is out there showing that short sleep duration absolutely interferes with concentration, interferes with performance on objective testing,” he said.

Some night owls do get good grades, of course, which may be explained by circadian rhythms, Weiss said. Circadian rhythms can be tracked through body temperature and hormonal transmissions.

Some people have different 24-hour body clocks than others, and may do better depending on class and testing times, Weiss said.

ChloJe LaFrance, a St. Lawrence junior from Elizabethtown majoring in psychology and English, said she's never studied all night. “If I get less than six hours of sleep I just do not function at all,” she said.

LaFrance, who has about a 3.7 GPA, said she's never had a situation where she couldn't get all her work done.

“I'm in a crunch period right now,” she said. “I just find I work better when I get sleep. I'm actually more productive.”

In Thacher's first study, 65 students said they had pulled one or more all-nighters, and 45 said they hadn't done any. The survey was conducted in Psychology 101 classes, and included students in a variety of majors.

 

Recap of Today's Board Workshop Meeting

Our Board held an all-day workshop today.  Here's a recap of the issues discussed and actions taken on today's Agenda:

First, we continued the discussion we began at our September workshop on our Theory of Action.  This discussion will continue in February.

Next, we received our regular quarterly update on the progress toward achieving the goals set out in the District's Five Year Education Plan.  For more information on the Five Year Plan, see these prior posts here, here, and here.

We then considered the implementation of the Bond Plan.  I believe that the processes we are putting into place will ensure the success of the bond plan.

Our next agenda item was the consideration of the current status of the 2008-2009 Calendar to be recommended by the Calendar Committee.  As I posted here and  here, during the last legislative session, the State mandated late start essentially removed almost all local control over the school calendar.  The Calendar Committee is going to post 2 additional alternative calendars, and a second survey will be posted on the District's website from December 17, 2007, until January 11, 2008.

One of the issues I have covered on this blog has been the threat to our District's Pre-Kindergarten program and its funding.  We discussed various potential options that might be necessary to consider in the event our program's grant funding is not continued by the State.  (More information on this issue can be found here.

We then adopted amendments to our 2007-2008 budget.

We are required to report and approve continuing education hours for each Board member.

One of the things that the Board feels is a critical component of the success of the 2007 Bond is the creation of the Bond Oversight Committee.  A partial list of the members and the Committee's charge is available here.

Every year, the District receives Federal funding for technology that the District then partially matches.  The Board approved this year's E-Rate funding.  We then approved the contract on which the E-Rate funds will be spent.

Meadow Wood Elementary Dedicates Its SPARK Park

I had the privilege today of speaking at the Meadow Wood Elementary SPARK Park dedication.  I took the picture above of the ribbon cutting with the people who made this great community asset possible.

Much, much more information can be seen at the Meadow Wood SPARK Park website.  Here are some more pictures (from that website).

Website Lists 10 Excellent Online Applications For the Innovative Teacher

Today I came across this site that has posted 10 online applications for teachers.  The website describes these applications as follows:

Teachers for all levels of students today have so many more teaching aids than even just a few years ago. That's not just because of greater access to the Internet but also because of the growing number of web applications that they can use. Some applications are specifically geared towards teaching and learning. Other applications can be adapted for these purposes. Here's a list of some online applications, listed alphabetically, that we feel are excellent for teachers.

Listed alphabetically, the online applications highlighted are

Chalksite. Chalksite is designed for teachers to let them give students and parents access to grades and assignments and even to communicate with them. Teachers get a personal website that's easy to use. Other features include student profiles, individual student accounts, messaging to one or more students or parents, grade entry and calculations, and discussions via messages and weblog comments.

Pricing ranges from a free plan up to US$14.95/ month. Students join free, and have access via an Internet connection and tested web browsers: Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox, Apple Safari. Since it's a hosted application, no other softwareis installed.

Edublogs. While something like Chalksite is ideal for some teachers, sometimes you just want a simple way to distribute information to your students, or even other teachers. Edublogs is an education community built on WordPress-powered blogs. It's free, and like most blogging platforms, you can embed video, podcasts, etc.

Edublogs offers 10 ways to use an edublog for teaching, which includes class publications and newsletters, online discussions, allowing student blogs, and adding multimedia. If you have a webcam, you can upload video files to YouTube and embed those into your blog. For more sophisticated video slideshows, try SplashCast Media's player. If you have the budget, Couple this with Techsmith's Snagit screen still capture and Camtasia Studio screen video capture applications.

FreeScienceLectures.com: Tons of Free Science Educational Videos

Here's another great (free) website that provides quality free science lectures online.  FreeScienceLectures.com has videos in the following categories:

• Animals
• Astronomy
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Genetics
• Physics
• Technology
• Water Life
• Weather

As an example, one of the most popular videos is one that shows how each planet scales in size relative to each other.

The exploration begins at the smallest planet Mercury which has diameter of just 4880 km, then comes Mars (6794 km), Venus, Earth (12756 km), Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter (142984 km), Sun, Sirius, Pollux, Arcturus (4177500 km), Rigel, Beteigeuze, Antares (1108430000 km), My Cephei, VV Cephei (288194 times bigger than Earth).

Edvance Report Blasts the State Center on Its Pre-K School Readiness Initiative: Says the Center's Budget is Not Transparent and Shows the Center has Spent 40% -- $8.6 million of Your Taxpayer Dollars -- for Its Own Internal Administrative Expenses

Last Spring, I testified in Austin on Senate Bill 50 and my concerns about the State Center, operated by Dr. Susan Landry, at the UT Health Science Center in Houston.  The State Center has created a pre-K curriculum that it has been selling to school districts throughout Texas.  I believe that one of the  problems with the State Center's curriculum is that it has not been subject to any review to determine success by any outside group.  In addition, there has been a push to impose the State Center's curriculum on Districts like Spring Branch, despite the outstanding success enjoyed by our program.

During the Spring, one of the things that the State Center highlighted in its favor was that it would be independently reviewed by Edvance with a report to be made publicly available by early Fall 2007.

I have been asking for the Edvance report for several months, and have been told by the State Center that the report was not available and/or had not been approved, and this despite the fact that $375,000 taxpayer dollars were allocated for the report.  Indeed, as of today, I am unaware of anyplace (other than this blog post) where you can easily obtain a copy of this report.

I finally obtained the report from another source and have now had the chance to review its contents.

The report is dated October 26, 2007, further calling into question the delay in releasing it to the public.

The report is a large file that I have broken down into the following parts which can be downloaded for your review: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

The headline from the report should be this quote taken from page 91:

Presently the State Center operates in the netherworld of state finance; the budget of the State Center is not transparent, expenditures and performance are not recapitulated for policy makers and a key and growing public school program is being operated not out of the Texas Education Agency but a medical school in Houston, Texas

This quote is especially troubling when you consider that the State Center has had $78 million allocated to its Pre-K readiness program in the last 4 years.  Of that amount, the Center has spent only $21.8 million with fully 40% of those funds totaling $8.6 million of taxpayer dollars on its own administration, i.e., none of that money reached a classroom.

On the expenditure side, the report further condemns the State Center for its failure to identify its expenditures in a manner that would allow for a cost allocation analysis.  It is impossible to determine how your tax dollar is being spent.  As an aside, the State Center reports that it has paid employee benefits that total approximately 21% of each employees salary.

The report further states: TEEM communities have received very little funds (in the form of cash) since the inception of the TEEM initiative.  With $21.8 million already spent, this is a very surprising revelation.

Equally problematic is that the report found no statistically significant benefit from the State Center in terms of student improvement.

In addition, one of the principal concerns I had in the Spring is that the State Center has developed the test to determine whether its own program is successful, yet it has refused to share the methodology it uses for that test with the public.  As a result, the data sources for the Edvance report, all of which has come from State Center data, is highly suspect given the Center's lack of transparency.

Finally, on August 31, 2007, I posted about my concern that the State Center's model is the equivalent of high stakes testing for 4 and 5 year olds.  The report does nothing to alleviate this concern, and indeed, the amount of money flowing (inefficiently) through the State Center, and its lack of public visibility and scrutiny only serve to enhance this problem.

I have submitted the following questions to Dr. Landry at the State Center, but have not yet received a response.  I will post the responses to these questions once they are received.

From: Mike Falick [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2007 12:29 PM
To: 'Mcmanis, Lilla D'; 'Landry, Susan '
Cc: 'Mike Falick'
Subject: Edvance Report

Dear Dr. McManis and Dr. Landry,

 

Please disregard my prior request concerning the Edvance report on TEEM.  I have obtained a copy of the report from another source.

 

I would like to give you the opportunity to respond to the following issues raised by the report:

 

    1.    The Cost Description (Chapter 3), states that the State Center has been awarded $78m over four years and spent $21.8m.  What is the intended use of the remaining balance?

    2.    Why were the 2006-2007 applications for the TEEM program not available for the evaluation team to review (page 31)?

    3.    Why has the State Center not identified specific cost drivers so a cost allocation model can be developed (page 44)?

    4.    How are the faculty and classified salaries, other wages, benefits, operating expenses, and indirect costs allocated to the individual TEEM classrooms (page 44)?  If they are not currently allocated, why not?

    5.    The expenditure category (Chapter 3, page 47) shows State Center General Operating expenditures of $8.59m over FY 2004-1/31/07 which represents approximately 40% of the total expended by the State Center.  Is this accurate?

    6.    Is the report accurate when it states on page 48 that "TEEM communities have received very little funds (in the form of cash) since the inception of the TEEM initiative?

    7.    Is the TBRS referenced throughout the report for both teacher and student evaluation publicly available?  Are the performance measurements publicly available?

    8.    Do you agree with the report on page 70 where it states "There was only one instance . . . in which the difference was significant for the overall sample, and no instances in which the English subsample yielded significant results?

    9.    Do you agree with the report on page 73 where it states regarding teacher behavior variables that "None of the findings were statistically significant . . . ."

    10.    Is it accurate to say that the data in the report based on the TBRS comes from the evaluation instrument developed internally by the State Center to judge the success of the TEEM model?

    11.    Do you agree with the report on page 76 where it states that "For Math Activities and Phonological Awareness Activities, although there were no statistically significant differences in gains, both had small negative effect sizes?

    12.    Does the State Center report "unique student identifiers" to any outside third parties (as suggested on page 84)?

    13.    Is the report accurate when it states that the second year did not include a true control group?  If so, why is that the case?

    14.    Do you agree with the report on page 91 where it states "Presently the State Center operates in the netherworld of state finance; the budget of the State Center is not transparent, expenditures and performance are not recapitulated for policy makers and a key and growing public school program is being operated not out of the Texas Education Agency but a medical school in Houston, Texas?  If so, why is the State Center's budget not transparent, and readily available to the public for scrutiny and inspection?

    15.   In Appendix B the report references datasets provided by the State Center.  Where/how was this data collected?

    16.    Is there longitudinal student data for the students who participated in Year 1 or Year 2, and if so, why was that data not utilized in the report?

    17.    Why was the Edvance report, which is dated October 26, 2007, not widely disseminated at the time of publication?

    18.    Is there anything else you would like to add concerning the Edvance report and its findings?

Thank you in advance for taking the time to respond to this email.

Mike Falick

MIT Puts Its Entire Curriculum for All 1,800 Undergraduate and Graduate Courses Online for Free: Includes a Section for High School Students and Teachers

In December 2005, I posted about MIT's OpenCourseWare efforts to put its courses online.  This week, MIT completed the six year project when every single course offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) became available online for free.  Its entire curriculum is now available online, with all 1,800 undergraduate and graduate courses - lectures, readings, labs, even problem sets and exams - available.

There is even a section titled Highlights for High School that features MIT OpenCourseWare materials that are most useful for high school students and teachers.  Click here to watch a video about the Highlights for High School materials.

From today's Boston Globe:

An MIT education is now just a click away

December 1, 2007

Ever wanted to delve a bit deeper into matrix theory, especially vector spaces and the misunderstood twin enigmas of linear algebra known as eigenvalues and eigenvectors?

As sure as every square matrix has a determinant, you are not alone. Now there is a kind of cerebral clearinghouse, accessible without ever setting foot inside MIT's hallowed halls, for those so inclined.

On Wednesday, the school celebrated the completion of a six-year initiative to put its entire curriculum online, with all 1,800 undergraduate and graduate courses - lectures, readings, labs, even problem sets and exams - available with just a few clicks and a spirit of scientific curiosity.

The initiative, the first of its kind, has been enormously successful, so far attracting some 31 million visitors from nearly every country who are drawn to such classes as Electricity and Magnetism, Classical Mechanics, and Introduction to Algorithms.

Lectures and readings from MIT's literature and history courses are also online, but the 20 most popular courses all involve science, economics, or math.

High school students and teachers are among the most avid participants, with 15,000 accessing the site each month. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has launched a website, called Highlights for High School, that is tailored to their interests.