Category Archives: Education

The Education Lottery

No Child Left Behind

Today we received a letter from the North Carolina State Board of Education, Office of Curriculum and School Reform Services (click on the image at left to see it). From the letter:

"Although great gains have been made in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School System (WS/FCS), the district did not make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in Reading (for four years in a row) or Math (for two years in a row) in grade spans 3-5, 6-8, and at the high school level, based on 2005-2006 test results. According to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the district is entering Corrective Action Phase of District Improvement. This identification means several things for the school district.

First, the district will continue to identify steps to improve student achievement by revising the school district’s Title I District Improvement Plan. This plan describes what the school district will do to help low-achieving children meet challenging academic achievement standards. In revising the plan, the district will consult with parents, school staff and others…

Second, in revising its Title I plan, WS/FCS is required to focus on the professional development needs of its instructional staff. This must be done by directly addressing the academic achievement problem(s) that caused the school district to be identified for improvement. (Emphasis mine)"

While I’m sure there are teachers that need improvement, and there are some that are incompetent, I don’t think you can lay the blame at their feet. The problem is probably much deeper and I suspect that we parents are as responsible for the kids’ failures as the teachers, if not more so. I’m also sure that there are plenty of kids who are themselves responsible; raise your hand if you know a bright, lazy kid. So why mandate professional development for teachers and yet not mandate some sort of participation by parents of underachieving kids? Why not mandate that underachieving kids have to stay after school for tutoring?

The larger questions about whether No Child Left Behind is worth a damn, or if evaluating schools based solely on standardized tests is a good idea are too sticky to get into here. But simply by looking at the current educational context and accepting the goal of a minimum number of children passing the tests we should ask ourselves if addressing one part of the equation, teachers, is adequate. I dare say it’s not, and I hope that the consultation with parents and school staff will result in at least some discussion of the expectations for parents and students in the process since the law doesn’t mandate it. I don’t care how much training a teacher gets; if they aren’t supported by the parents the kids are lost, and if the kids aren’t held accountable then they’re going to continue to fail.

**Update: Esbee has a great post on homeschooling that I think is relevant to this piece.**

Different Trouble at School

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Thanks to distance learning programs becoming more and more common the kinds of online degrees you can find today are much more diverse than ever before. There are many online universities to choose from as well, so you can make sure that your online university offers what you are looking for ahead of time, like an online special education degree for those who want.
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Back on October 30, 2006 a teacher and the principal at Lewisville Elementary were suspended with pay while they were investigated. I originally posted about it here and I’ve updated the post several times since then. At the beginning of the new year the principal, Mr. Rash, was reinstated with his pocket a little lighter (10 days of his suspension was unpaid) and today (January 17, 2007) the teacher, Mr. Snow was reinstated in full. I should point out that Mr. Rash was suspended because of how he originally handled the allegations against Mr. Snow, thus the unpaid part of his suspension, and Mr. Snow was suspended due to the allegations for which he has now been cleared.

The image above is a scan of the letter that the school system sent home with the students today (click on it to enlarge) and this followed a late automated call from the school superintendent last night. That call was made because the father of the child who made the accusations showed up at the Board of Education last night and during the public part of the meeting complained that Mr. Snow was going to be reinstated. From the article about it in the Winston-Salem Journal:

An angry parent
confronted members of the Forsyth County school board in a meeting last night after he learned that school officials planned to return a
teacher who was investigated by the sheriff’s office to the classroom
this week.

"What concerns me
greatly is I learned of this decision via the grapevine," said the parent, whose child is a student at Lewisville Elementary School and
one of the children involved in the misconduct allegations against the
science teacher, Alan Snow. The Winston-Salem Journal is not
identifying the parent in order protect the identity of the child.

The parent said he
is concerned that he might not have enough time to prepare his family for the teacher’s return if it happened as quickly as school-system
officials told him that it could.

Superintendent Don
Martin and school-board chairman Donny Lambeth interrupted the father
a few minutes after he began speaking during the meeting.

Martin also
approached the father in the auditorium after the meeting ended and chastised him for talking about the case during an open session,
telling him that doing so could create more publicity before parents
could be advised about the teacher’s status.

The parents of the
child involved in the case met privately with the school system’s attorneys and other officials after the public meeting.

Martin updated the
school board on the case during a closed session last night, but he said later that no decision has been made about whether Snow can return
to teaching.

In his letter to the parents Superintendent Martin expressed regret that the investigation by the Sheriff’s and District Attorney’s offices took so long and that he appreciated the parents’ and Mr. Snow’s patience in the matter. I’d say the least they should be is appreciative. The man lived through the holidays with this hanging over his head and he’s been in limbo for close to 90 days and that’s simply unacceptable to me.

In a comment posted a couple of days ago on my original post a person going by the moniker P. Smith made some interesting comparisons between Mr. Snow’s case and the Duke Lacrosse case. In the first paragraph of that comment he/she wrote the following:

Some interesting comparisons to what happened at Duke and the case in
Lewisville–an allegation from an unreliable witness–in this case a
teacher with a vendetta against another teacher. Sounds like the
science teacher is coming back to Lewisville after a thorough
investigation which found no wrong doing on him. Now, the question is:
what happens to someone who makes up a story to "get back at another
person"?

Until now I’ve only heard about a student making an allegation against Mr. Snow, but P. Smith seemed to know about Mr. Snow being cleared at least a day before it became a news item which leads me to believe he/she is tapped into the "grapevine" that the student’s dad referred to in the Journal article, and so I’m wondering which teacher the grapevine is saying had it out for Mr. Snow.

Now comes the truly hard part for the school. Mr. Snow is an incredibly popular teacher with many students and parents and I have a feeling that there are going to be some festering wounds left by this experience. I can only imagine what Mr. Snow is feeling these days, and he will be a larger man than most of us if he is able to return to school and not harbor some serious animosity towards those who were ready to believe the worst. (Speaking of which, to this date no one has said what Mr. Snow was accused of, so everyone was left to imagine the worst). And I’m sure that there will be many members of the Lewisville community wondering what the consequences should be for those who filed the allegations against Mr. Snow. There will also be those wondering if Mr. Snow has grounds for a civil case against his accuser’s family and there may even be those who will push him to sue. Finally, I’m sure there are plenty of people who know who made the accusations and I’m willing they won’t be too shy about sharing that knowledge. All of this can spell serious trouble for the school’s community, and I guess the best we can hope for at this point is that we keep the kids out of the fray as much as possible. That’s something about which I’m sure everyone can agree.

As for the school system I think they have to seriously re-think some of their policies. When I talked to the Assistant Superintendent for Lewisville, a very nice lady named Charlene Davis, she emphasized to me that if they are going to err it is going to be on the side of protecting the children. I’m all for that, but I think they can do so without killing a teacher’s career. For instance, I see no reason to make the teacher’s name public until there’s sufficient evidence or reason to do so. Sure we the parents will probably know what’s going on, but in the Google Age the accusations will live long and spread far whether they’re founded or not. Let’s put it this way; if Mr. Snow decides to leave town and start fresh somewhere else he’ll probably be checked out by all potential employers and if they type his name into a search engine what do you think will pop up? What are the chances they’ll see the article about the allegations and then stop looking before they get to the articles about his being cleared?

What I mentioned to Ms. Davis is that they could have protected the kids by removing Mr. Snow from the classroom and they could have protected Mr. Snow by saying that he was on a temporary assignment with the school system, or that he was taking a leave of absence. Whatever, as long as they don’t make public that a teacher is being investigated until they have solid evidence that something’s going on then I think they’ll be doing a lot better.

Another issue they need to work on is communication. They definitely did a better job once enough parents complained about not knowing what was going on, but they need to have a communication process already planned out for instances like this. By not communicating effectively they let the grapevine or rumor mill do the communicating for them and that helps no one.

**Update 1/22/07** In the Sunday, January 21, 2007 Winston-Salem Journal columnist Scott Sexton had the following in his piece:

The man wanted to know
whether school officials were about to put a teacher who had been
investigated on sexual-abuse allegations involving his son back into
the classroom Thursday morning. If so, he wanted to know why he and his
wife had not been told about it.

and

Dealing with sex-abuse
allegations is difficult for all parties. The parents ride an emotional
roller coaster, and the teacher, whose livelihood and reputation are at
stake, goes through hell, too. Investigators have to tread lightly when
interviewing a child, and school officials must work hard to balance
the serious nature of the accusations with the rights of their employee.

As far as I know this is the first time that the specific allegations against Mr. Snow have been made public and I’ve emailed Mr. Sexton to see if he’ll share where he heard those specific allegations. Was it at the board meeting (did the father blurt it out during the public session) or did he get it in private from the family or from a school official? And no matter the source, why specify the charges now that Mr. Snow has been cleared and after everyone (including his own paper) had been so careful to avoid publicly airing the specific allegations?

To sum up I can only say that I hope that Mr. Snow can find peace back at school, the Lewisville community can somehow patch the wounds of this event and the school system can learn from its mistakes before more careers are jeopardized. As for the child and his family, I don’t know them (don’t want to know who they are) and I only hope that they somehow find whatever help they need.

The Web’s Usefulness Knows No End; Where My Kids Won’t Be Going to College

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Here’s a link to a little Google mashup that shows you where the top 10 most expensive colleges are in the United States. I’m going to use this sites to steer my children away from these particular institutions, but despite what you might think it’s not only because of the money.

While I was in school I spent quite a bit of time on the campus of the most expensive school, George Washington University, and from that experience I learned a couple of important lessons:

When drinking is involved, the idiotic behavior of the students is directly proportional to the amount of money the drinkers’ parents are spending on their education. It was only at GWU that I witnessed people flinging themselves off of fire escapes into the kind-of-waiting arms of their even-more-drunk brethren. I never saw equally stupid behavior at my state-school with one tenth the tuition, George Mason University.
I also spent a little time at the number two school on the list, the University of Richmond. I had a distinct dislike for those guys because the Spiders routinely knocked GMU out of the CAA tournament when Richmond was still in the conference. On top of that they were some snotty SOBs even before they started drinking and the aforementioned rule kicked in. In short, lesson #2 is that money doesn’t buy class.

Okay, okay, it’s more than a little about the money. I’m not sure I want to, or even can, swing the equivalent of a car payment x 8 for my childrens’ education. Unless they get themselves a heckuva scholarship it just ain’t happening. But that’s okay because my main goals are to get them to 18 still healthy (I’m talking about them), educated well enough that someone will let them into their school, and sane enough to appreciate it (I’m talking about me). I’m not too terribly picky about where they go, as long as they go…right away. None of this "I need to discover myself" BS, because if they want to discover themselves they can do it on their own nickel in their own roach infested hell-hole. I’m pretty sure that’s when they’ll "discover" higher education is where it’s at.

After kid #3 gets his papers I have a plan. I’ve informed Celeste but she doesn’t think I’m serious, but I have a feeling when kid #1 gets ready to graduate (hopefully in the same swift five years it took his dad) and we’re looking the possibility of a boomerang kid square in the eyes she’ll buy into my plan. It’s really quite simple in its brilliance: we’ll sell the house, buy an RV using the proceeds and some of the money we saved by not sending our kids to one of America’s expensive and vastly overrated learning institutions, and then we’ll tour the States. We’ll coordinate with the kids for holidays and just show up. Heck we might even swing by and visit between the holidays, but the roost will be moving and I seriously doubt any sane 22 year old would want to fly back to it. We’ll keep the trailer until the kids get married and start creating their own private agony known as parenthood and then we’ll buy a house that requires zero upkeep (i.e. has no yard) near them so we can spoil the little brats, er grandkids, and send them home with their parents.

So we’ll get away for a while, recover some remnant of our pre-kids souls, and actually begin to speak in full sentences again. We’ll recharge our batteries and ready ourselves to unleash life’s greatest reward: grandparents’ revenge.

Testing, Testing. Law of Unintended Consequences

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Anyone with kids in public schools knows about the rise in prominence of standardized tests. Thanks to No Child Left Behind much school funding is put at risk when schools don’t have enough students pass the mandated tests. On top of that school administrators can lose their jobs if their students don’t pass at appropriate levels, so you can imagine the "learning atmosphere" that this might create.

One consequence of the increased emphasis on testing is that you have teachers teaching to the test. Our kids now come home with syllabi that clearly indicate when test preparations begin, which is usually one month before the test is administered. And test preparation doesn’t just mean covering the subject matter, it also means test taking strategy. Imagine spending a whole month getting ready for tests, and think about the ripple effect it has on the rest of the curriculum.

Another consequence of the new testing regime is that you have administrators and teachers fighting for their professional lives, and that leads them to do some rather strange things. Exhibit A is the principal in Washington state who suspended a fourth grade student for five days because he refused to answer an essay question on the state exam. You can read about it here. The kid didn’t want to write the essay because he was worried that it would offend the principal (the same one who ended up suspending him) and he couldn’t be convinced that it was okay to write the essay. The principal was so worried about the effect of his refusal to answer on the school’s average that she suspended him for "blatant defiance and insubordination." Simply put, she’s off her rocker.

Given the atmosphere that school administrators are working in these days it’s no wonder you have a few whackos going too far. In an effort to bring accountability to education what No Child Left Behind has actually done is change a learning environment into a test factory producing Scantron-completing robots (our kids). I’m all for making sure our teachers and school administrators are held responsible for doing their jobs, but there has to be a better way than this.

Winston-Salem Forsyth County School Bond Proposal

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Tomorrow we citizens of Forsyth County will have the opportunity to vote for a $250 million school bond. Of the $250 million about $125 million will be used to build seven new schools, $90 million will be used to renovate 14 schools and $4 million will be used for wireless internet connections in all 74 schools. The school system is growing and there’s a rampant fear that our students will be increasingly educated in trailers.

The NAACP is against the proposal because they see it furthering the supposed segregation that the school system has developed since neighborhood schools were introduced back in the mid-90s. Their argument is that schools with a high percentage of minority, low income students are underperforming and that it is an inequitable situation. They feel that we need to return to forced integration of the schools so that there is an equal demographic balance in the schools.

Here’s my take on the situation:

First, I absolutely agree that school buildings need to be safe, clean and sanitary so any necessary renovations to old buildings should be made. On the other hand there are many worse environments in which you can learn than an air-conditioned trailer, and I’ll bet that if you asked a student if he’d prefer a clean, warm (or cool), dry trailer or a leaky, drafty, dirty bricks and mortar building he’d take the trailer any day. And you have to ask yourself is a state of the art, brick and mortar building the most critical component of providing a good education?

Second, most of the schools are segregated by demographics because the parents, rich and poor, minority and white, choose it to be that way. Are you really going to tell them they’re wrong? If they don’t want their child bused halfway across town in order to meet the system’s ideal demographic breakdown then you have to respect their position. You also have to ask what you’re truly trying to accomplish by integrating the schools. Is it to bring up the poorer students’ academic achievement by associating them with richer, better students? If that’s the case aren’t you just as likely to bring down the richer, better students’ academic achievements? Instead of looking at forced busing don’t you think you should address the core issue, which is sub-standard academic performance by the students?

To me, the solution to my first question, "Is a state of the art, bricks and mortar building the most critical component of providing a good education" and my last question, "Instead of looking at forced busing don’t you think you should address
the core issue, which is sub-standard academic performance by the
students" is more teachers. We should spend every dime we can on recruiting and retaining more teachers and keeping the student-teacher ratio as low as possible. I’d rather build a trailer village of education with a 10-1 student-teacher ratio than a castle of learning with a 30-1 student-teacher ratio.

The Journal had a feature story about the school bond that addressed the segregation issue and in it they mention that the new high school, Carver, in the poor part of town was set up as a magnet school with all the latest, greatest equipment but no parents from outside the district want to send their kids there. My argument would be that instead of worrying about getting other kids there you worry about educating the kids that are already there. You don’t throw money at the hardware, you throw money at the talent. In other words, forget the fancy equipment and double your teaching force. Make sure each kid gets tremendous individual attention and do it in the schools that need the help most. Before long you’ll have kids achieving beyond imagination and you’ll probably have to set up a lottery system to deal with the parents clamoring to get their kids in the new school. That’s when you start doing the same for all the schools.

Unfortunately this school bond is continuing the trend of spending money in the wrong place. I’d like to see more money spent on talent and less on hardware. Spend the $90 million on renovations, but take that $125 million and expand the existing schools and vastly expand the teaching ranks. Also look at more creative thinking. For instance:

Why not use some of the empty commercial space out there for classes?
Why not get more active with online learning initiatives?

You’d think that with three kids in the school system that I’d be a rubber stamp for the bond initiative. I would be if I thought they were spending on the right things, but they’re not so I won’t vote for it.

Trouble at School

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Last night we got an automated phone call from Lewisville Elementary which is nothing extraordinary since we get about one or two calls a week from the school. But last night my youngest took the call and listened to it and then informed me that his principal and science teacher had been suspended. Given the fact that Justin is 10 I kind of took it with a grain of salt because there is no more reliable way to get a muddled message across than to tell a 10 year old boy something and have him pass it along.

After Justin gave me the message I checked the school system’s website and found nothing there and heard nothing on the news so I chalked it up to a misunderstanding. This morning I saw nothing in the newspaper and there was nothing on the news all morning until about 9:00 a.m. when it was reported on WXII that Principal Rash and Mr. Snow the school’s popular science teacher had been suspended. The school system hasn’t given a reason for Mr. Snow’s suspension but they did say that Mr. Rash was suspended because of how he handled the unspecified allegations against Mr. Snow.

This is the first time we’ve had anything like this happen with any of our own kids’ principals or teachers. Both Justin and my daughter Erin really enjoy Mr. Snow’s classes and the few times I’ve been around Mr. Rash I’ve found him to be engaging and popular with the parents. Hopefully the school system will let us know what’s going on.

I just checked the school’s website and there’s still nothing on there about this whole mess. I’d like to suggest that they do a better job of using the site to inform us of what’s going on, and I’d also like to suggest that the school have a number we can call in to retrieve any messages that we parents might have missed because our kids listened on our behalf. I’d suggest putting an audio archive online but I don’t want to overtax them.

**Update** Here’s another point I’d like to make. I know that due to state personnel laws the school system can’t tell us too much about what’s going on, but why can’t they at least tell us if this is a potential criminal matter or more of a procedural matter? We got a call last week about a pellet gun being found on a student last week so I’m wondering if Mr. Snow and Mr. Rash were suspended for mishandling that situation. Or is it something far more serious like what happened recently at Jefferson Middle School? They could at least let us know the potential severity of the situation. I’ve had two kids who were or are students of Mr. Snow so I’d at least like to know if he’s suspected of doing something really creepy. If he’s not suspected of something criminal it would benefit him and the parents to let us know it’s a procedural matter.

**Update #2** I got around to reading the Winston-Salem Journal’s item about the incident and they got confirmation from the sheriff’s office that they are investigating, so I guess we can assume that it’s a criminal investigation. Justin came home from school with a note from Mr. Gale who is the acting principal. Here’s the text:

Dear Lewisville Parents:

As most of you know by now, Alan Snow, the science specialist at Lewisville Elementary, and Ron Rash, the principal, were suspended yesterday with pay. School-system administrators are investigating an allegation of misconduct against Mr. Snow and how Mr. Rash handled the allegation. I understand this is a difficult time, and as soon as the investigation is completed, we will provide more information.

I will be filling in for Mr. Rash as principal for a short period of time until the investigation has been completed. I would like for you to know a little about me.

I retired from the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School System in June, 2005 after serving the school system for thirty-nine years. I served as principal in three schools:

1990-2005 Piney Grove Elementary School

1978-1990 Speas Elementary School

1971-1978 Fairview Intermediate School (now Ashley Elem.)

I also served as a sixth grade teacher at Clemmons Elementary School from 1966-1971.

As I entered Lewisville Elementary Monday morning, it was quickly evident that Lewisville has a very dedicated, caring staff that is providing a wonderful environment for children. During my short stay at Lewisville, it is my desire to assist you and the staff to continue to provide a safe learning environment for your child. I can assure you that we will do everything in our power to do just that.

If you have any concerns, questions, or comments, I will be happy to talk to you. I look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,
signature
Thomas N. Gale
Acting Principal

I talked to another parent who did hear the automated phone message that was broadcast last night and she said that a contact name and phone number was provided for calling with questions. She was quite frustrated that she didn’t have a pen to write down the name and number and there was no way to replay the message. This just reinforces my belief that for something this important the school system needs to come up with some alternative messaging systems.

**Update #3** Here’s a link to WXII’s October 31 report on the investigation. According to the report the sheriff’s office was informed of the allegations early last week, which begs several questions. First, why weren’t parents informed about this sooner? Second, why was Mr. Snow allowed to keep teaching for another week? If it went to the sheriff’s office early last week it would lead a logical person to believe that the school system knew about this even earlier. I think we parents are owed some answers.

**Update #4, 11/9/06** I called the Assistant Superintendent who’s responsible for Lewisville Elementary, Charlene Davis, and she returned my call very promptly. She discussed the issues with me and shared with me that the investigation is now in the hands of the sheriff’s department and that she’s asked the school system’s attorney to make sure the sheriff shares any developments with them as soon as they can. She also filled me in on the timeline of events and all things considered it sounds like they moved on this as quickly as possible. She also told me that she’s spoken with lots of parents (apparently I wasn’t the first to call) and that she’s happy to talk with any parents. So if you have questions please do call Ms. Davis.

Competition in Education

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The U.S. public education system sucks. It’s a virtual monopoly that as John Stossel writes in this piece, is run pretty much the same way North Korea or Cuba run their school systems. Stossel quotes Albert Shanker, once the head of the American Federation of Teachers, as saying, "It’s time to admit that the public education system operates like a
planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody’s role is
spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and
productivity. It’s no surprise that our school system doesn’t improve.
It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."

What kills me is that we seem to think that throwing more money at the problem is the solution. Well, one need only look at the D.C. public schools to see that money is not the solution. D.C. spends $12,801 per student while the counties that comprise its suburbs in Virginia and Maryland spend between $9,374 (Prince William County, VA) and $16,464 (Arlington County, VA) respectively and yet easily out-perform the D.C. system. D.C. does have a very high percentage of poor families which is without a doubt a factor, but they also have chronic management problems and since the vast majority of families can’t afford private schools they’re stuck with what they’ve got.

The frustrating part of this to me is that all of us pay for schools with our taxes and if we don’t like how our schools are performing we pretty much get told, "tough." Even if you’re lucky enough to be able to afford private schools you’re essentially paying for your child’s education twice over (taxes + private school tuition) which is a rip-off. The only real option is to make sure you live in a neighborhood with good schools, but that in effect is a form of economic segregation.

When we lived in Virginia our kids were in the Prince William County school system (lowest per-pupil spending in the DC metro area) and we made sure we lived in a neighborhood that had good schools. The interesting thing to note is that our kids’ school was racially diverse, but economically we were all so uniform it was kind of weird. Everyone lived in the same kind of house, drove the same kind of car, participated in the same activities and most of all were highly involved in the schools. Most parent-teacher events were packed because both parents of most of the kids were there, and the kids did very well academically.

Just one school zone over, though, things got a little dicey. More poverty, gangs, lots of school fights and below-par academics. Same school system, same spending, but much lower performance. Unfortunately the parents didn’t have many options. If they wanted their children to go to a different school they had to apply for a spot, and if they were lucky enough to get one they had to find a way to get their kids to and from school on their own. Not a great option, especially if both parents were working, which in the D.C. area is the norm.

When we moved here to Forsyth County, NC we did a lot of research on the schools and moved to Lewisville because the elementary, middle and high schools that served our neighborhood were among the best the county had to offer. What we didn’t know at the time was that if we decided that we didn’t like our kids’ schools we could pick other schools for them to go to and the county would provide busing. The consequence of this is that the first week of school is very hectic as the school transportation system gets all the kinks worked out, and some kids do spend a great deal of time on the bus (my son’s best friend spends 1 1/2 hours on the bus each way), but the parents have options. It isn’t easy, but the school system makes it work.

Still, many people don’t want their kids to have to travel far to go to school, and many kids don’t want to leave their local schools because that’s where their friends are. That’s why I’d rather see a system where some creative, hard working educators could come in and start a new school that offers options for those kids. Maybe it would have a science and technology emphasis, or an emphasis on trades. Whatever. It would provide a viable alternative for the parents and they could choose where their tax dollars are spent (vouchers). If the schools are good, they survive. If they suck, they die.

Some people don’t like the idea of school vouchers for a variety of reasons, including the idea that many parochial (i.e. religious) private schools would end up getting public money, but from what I can see most of them (teachers unions, school administrators) are more afraid of losing their monopoly status and actually having to provide a superior service/product in a competitive market. As we’ve seen in other businesses they do have something to worry about; when competition is introduced to a closed market the big losers are the former monopolies and the big winners are the customers and the entrepreneurs. As a lifelong customer and entrepreneur you can guess which way I lean.

A Life of “Deferred Success”

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It seems that the teachers union in England, the Professional Association of Teachers, is asking its members to avoid describing their students as clever or giving their students awards for being clever as to avoid causing the students to be bullied…for being clever. This is the same group that last year asked its members to replace the term ‘failure’ with ‘deferred success.’ You can read about it here.

Thus my life accomplishments have now been re-categorized.

App State is Hot, Hot, Hot!