Education: Bloomberg's Biz

So, it may seem as if I'm a little late to the punch, seeing as this NY Times article was posted exactly a month ago, but I'm going to comment anyway. Yes, now that Eric and I are both school teachers in public schools (and dues-paying members of the United Federation of Teachers), I have been paying more attention to news about education. And this story takes the cake for "outrageous" and "idiotic."

In our monthly union meeting yesterday, it was mentioned that New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is planning on cutting more money from the education budget this coming fall. Basically the equivalent of at least three full-time teachers' salaries per school in the whole district (14,000 schools).

This is in addition to the budget cut he already executed, coincidentally, on the first day I started my new job. That cut was a surprise attack. Since all the schools are linked and receive their budgets through the city, the city can go in and take funds whenever they want. And that's exactly what happened. The budget cut was authorized, happened overnight, and the next morning, payroll secretaries and the like checked their computers to find that money they had already accounted for and/or spent was gone. Oh wait, it wasn't a total surprise. Schools received an e-mail the night before, notifying them that the money would be gone in the morning.

My favorite quote from the article is this gem:

"Mr. Bloomberg, speaking on Thursday at Google’s offices in Chelsea, said the cuts would have 'no impact whatsoever,' adding, 'I know of no organization where you couldn’t’ squeeze out 1.7 percent, or even a lot more.'"


Sure, if you are a company who can raise prices, lower quality standards, or do whatever it has to do in order to sustain itself after a cut like that. But schools don't make a product, they educate students. So maybe each school should tell 1.7 percent of its students they can't go to school there anymore?

Voting Machines vs. Poll Workers

First plastic post. Just a quick one to expand on the voter fraud/machine-counted vs. hand-counted ballot issue.

The NYTimes Sunday Magazine did a story on electronic and touch screen voting machines last weekend. The cover almost says it all:


But not quite. The article brings up that in many situations, poll workers are not trained properly about how to operate or set up voting machines. Or they are just oblivious and incompetent, losing flash drives from electronic voting machines, leaving church doors open the night before voting with vulnerable machines inside, etc etc.

[I]n the real world of those who conduct and observe voting machines, the realistic threat isn’t conspiracy. It’s unreliability, incompetence and sheer error.

Whether or not people are dissuaded from voting because they can't be sure their votes are counted is one thing. If there were to be a proven conspiracy in the voting process, that's another beast entirely. But what if you just don't trust computers OR human beings to accurately report your vote?

What kind of training do poll workers receive anyway?

What Has Happened?

I was in a large electronics chain a few days ago in midtown to buy electronic material when I heard an unsettling sound. A man was straining to sing In Bloom by Nirvana and was unfortunately moderately amplified. There was backing music that sounded rather cheesy. I looked over and saw a group of youngish men congregated and staring at a large television. Turns out In Bloom made it into the latest Guitar Hero game and a couple of dudes were "performing" the song.

Ugh.

At first I was angry. I flashed back to the ages of 16-17-18 when something like this would have infuriated me for days. Then I was sad that somehow this song made its way into a video game and will now be heard for the first time by thousands of kids sitting around their houses after school with dirty plates and glasses stacked around them while focusing on pressing the right buttons at the right time. It's unfortunate that whoever has control of these songs let them devolve from what they once were to silly cartoonish bullshit.