Study: Class size doesn’t matter - The Washington Post

Well worth a read, although specifically focused on studies done in New York City. (Full 48-page report not readily available to the general public.) Thousands of studies have been done to show what's wrong with K-12 education and how to fix it. Will this one also wind up in the education reform dustbin?

Knowing what works and penetrating the status-quo inertia of the present system is a Herculean effort and usually goes nowhere except where real leadership and champions for change exist for the long term. Will these insights fare better within the education establishment?

"Two Harvard researchers looked at the factors that actually improve student achievement and those that don’t. In a new paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Will Dobbie and Roland Freyer analyzed 35 charter schools, which generally have greater flexibility in terms of school structure and strategy. They found that traditionally emphasized factors such as class size made little difference, compared with some new criteria:


We find that traditionally collected input measures — class size, per pupil expenditure, the fraction of teachers with no certification, and the fraction of teachers with an advanced degree — are not correlated with school effectiveness. In stark contrast, we show that an index of five policies suggested by over forty years of qualitative research — frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time, and high expectations — explains approximately 50 percent of the variation in school effectiveness..." [emphasis added dju]

Barnes & Noble, Taking On Amazon in the Fight of Its Life - NYTimes.com

I believe print books will become a niche market in just a few years. Why do I say that? Look at the music industry and realize that the CD is a dying breed. As young people have grown up with electronic devices, it's only natural for them to read on the devices as well as listen and view. Whether 'books' in the traditional long form survive as a popular format remains to be seen because attention spans are also notoriously shortened in this digital world.


The big music stores have long ago disappeared from my area.  Music is still sold at Best Buy and Walmart, but I see relatively few shoppers in that department. Instead, people buy and pirate music online. We have one large Barnes & Noble store, and it seems busy enough in a university town, but can it last?

I think I am a realistic example of why printed books will die rapidly. I'm an elderly voracious reader, but infrequently  long-form books, perhaps only a half dozen annually. I read news stories, columns and opinions mostly from my desktop PC, which means, the NY Times, WSJ, various technology and other news sites are my sources.

I am also a Google junkie and use about 20 of their cloud services. It's very difficult to beat 'free' with good apps that are always improving. So reading time on my PC means fewer traditional print books in the easy chair. That's reserved mostly for TV. At first I bought a few Google Books which I read mostly on my Android phone, but occasionally on my desktop PC, too. I like the great convenience of books I own available everywhere without having to lug them around and take up space storing them.

As a dedicated Amazon fan, I buy hundreds of dollars of stuff from them every year for reasons of selection, price and convenience using the Amazon Prime service providing the $79 unlimited 'free' shipping. I also bought myself a Kindle Fire for Christmas and really do like it for convenience and ease of use to read content, browse and buy. Amazon has a real winner here, because it is a gateway to all that Amazon offers, content as well as hard goods. I usually keep it on a table by my easy chair, using it during commercials or when dull TV content prevails. Barnes & Noble lacks this competitive advantage.


The Times story makes no mention of this massive Amazon competitive advantage. For me the choice is simple. Buy a device that provides me the the ability to buy nearly anything, rather than just reading material. It's the reason that I also bought a few shares of Amazon stock at the time I purchased my Kindle Fire. 

I bought a couple of Amazon books for the Fire and I really like the ability to send PDF files to it via email for reading or to take documents such as agendas and minutes to a meeting. However, I find that Google does not make it easy to convert documents in their Docs cloud to PDFs for sending via email. (Instead, you download it as a PDF, then attach it to an email to send it from a PC to the Kindle. It would be so much more convenient to to convert to PDF right in Google Docs and send immediately.) I suspect Google makes it a multi-step process for competitive reasons.


In summary, Amazon will win this battle and the traditional print publishers need a different business model. Smart authors will not restrict themselves to books in print, at least not if they want my business.

"...Without Barnes & Noble, the publishers’ marketing proposition crumbles. The idea that publishers can spot, mold and publicize new talent, then get someone to buy books at prices that actually makes economic sense, suddenly seems a reach. Marketing books via Twitter, and relying on reviews, advertising and perhaps an appearance on the “Today” show doesn’t sound like a winning plan.
What publishers count on from bookstores is the browsing effect. Surveys indicate that only a third of the people who step into a bookstore and walk out with a book actually arrived with the specific desire to buy one..."

Sixteen Concerned Scientists: No Need to Panic About Global Warming - WSJ.com

Bravo for these scientists' and engineers' willingness to speak out about climate change and for the WSJ to publish their statement.


The climate is always changing, sometimes slowly and sometimes more rapidly. When advocates for rant about 'doing something' to control climate change, my first question is "What is the average temperature of the earth that you would like to reach?" With that answer in hand (or maybe not), my follow-on question is, "How much will it cost and how long will it take." "Finally, who will pay?"

"...A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet..."

Camapign for Vermont Electric/Energy Policy Statement

We are beginning to see some policy positions from Bruce Lisman's Campaign for Vermont Prosperity. Here is an excerpt from a recent statement about energy and electricity.

There's another by Jeanne Keller recently issued about Vermont's health care direction.

So far, I like what I'm reading. Whether the Campaign can generate momentum for a different direction remains to be seen because so many Vermont forces are aligned in a direction that relies on government rather than the private sector for prosperity.


Governments can only foster economic prosperity by creating an environment where private sector capitalism can thrive. That's not what this Vermont Administration and Legislature are about.

"Campaign for Vermont believes our state needs an electricity plan without empty sloganeering. Politicians say building a 90 percent renewable energy future will create jobs, save the climate and foster energy independence. It all sounds good. And it is, in the abstract, until we learn about the cost and reliability. For example, most renewable power

sources are intermittent; that is they don't operate reliably all the time. But citizens and job creators need affordable, on-demand "base load" electricity every minute of every day.

Furthermore, Vermont state law obliges utilities to provide customers with low-cost, reliable power."

Google, Look Out Behind You! | TechCrunch

Worth a read to understand one guru's view of the battle royal between Google, Apple and Facebook. (No mention of Microsoft) in light of Apple's 'blow 'em away' earnings reported last quarter. Apple's profit was greater than Google's revenue!

In summary, it's all about mobile and the absolute control that Apple has over its ecosystem of devices and software to control the customer experience. I wonder if that dominance will eventually lead to anti-trust scrutiny as Microsoft faced with it's Internet browser?

"Google is also threatened by the inexorable rise of the social internet. Its admirable roll-out of Google Plus over the recent past is almost entirely related to that threat. And at now 90 million users and growing, Google Plus is definitely off to a good start. The decision to change Google Search into a “Search plus Your World” experience this week is probably a necessary part of the response to Facebook also. The controversy that led Larry Page to reportedly suggest that employees who are hanging onto the old Google to go and work elsewhere is a misplaced loyalty to a model that can no longer be sufficient to ensure Google remains relevant. However, by focusing on the strategic threat posed by Facebook almost exclusively, Google may have waited too long, and have the wrong strategy, to beat a more serious challenger – Apple."

North Korea threatens to punish mobile-phone users as 'war criminals' - Telegraph

The leaders of North Korea are so far removed from reality as to be considered fools. How does the world negotiate with fools, nuclear fools at that?

"North Korea has warned that any of its citizens caught trying to defect to China or using mobile phones during the 100-day mourning period for Kim Jong-il will be branded as "war criminals" and punished accordingly."

Judge Rules Vermont's Legislature has Overreached ...Yet Again

The decision yesterday by U.S. District Judge Murtha in the case brought by Entergy against the State of Vermont is a clear victory for the plaintiff and one more rebuff of Vermont's Legislature for making laws that are unconstitutional. Vermont Attorney General Sorrell sits in an even darker shadow for apparently failing to provide proper legal guidance to the Legislature at the time these laws are considered.  Even to a layman the outcome of this case was obvious long before it was filed. The Commerce clause of the Constitution would prevail and Judge Murtha has ruled correctly.

Whether a Vermonter is for or against nuclear power generated in Vermont, one cannot fail to recognize that in this case and in prior cases dealing with election laws and prescription drug information, Vermont continues to step beyond the U.S. Constitution and has a losing record when challenged in Federal court. Let's hope that wisdom will prevail and that Vermont will not appeal this case to waste yet more money.

Vermonters deserve better from their Governor, their Legislature and their Attorney General. This and prior litigation at the Supreme Court has unnecessarily wasted millions of taxpayer dollars. More form the national media on the the Vermont Attorney General's court performances here from Dave Gram, a Vermont AP reporter, in the San Jose Mercury News.

Voters should pay heed to these events and elect people who have greater respect for the Constitution and who will resist their ideology-driven law-making.

Finally, kudos to those in the Vermont Senate who voted against these laws that have been found unconstitutional.

No Anti-Corporate Amendment to the Constitution

In Vermont we are watching an effort led by various liberal/socialist elements to amend the Constitution in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case. We have slogans such as "Money is not speech," "a corporation is not a person" and others to gin up the emotions of their followers. We see State Senators (Lyons & Campbell) leading rallies calling for a resolution supporting an Amendment to restrict free speech. [There are several versions floating around. The former link is just one.] And the usual activists, including Ben And Jerry's founder Jerry Greenfield, are beating the drum against political free speech by corporations.

I'm not an attorney, but in reading portions of the Citizen's United decision which has raised the hackles of these people who would amend the Constitution, I find this comment by Justice Scalia writing in response to Justice Stevens' dissent most relevant:

"But to return to, and summarize, my principal point, which is the conformity of today’s opinion with the original meaning of the First Amendment. The Amendment is written in terms of “speech,” not speakers. Its text offers no foothold for excluding any category of speaker, from single individuals to partnerships of individuals, to unincorporated associations of individuals, to incorporated associations of individuals—and the dissent offers no evidence about the original meaning of the text to support any such exclusion. We are therefore simply left with the question whether the speech at issue in this case is “speech” covered by the First Amendment. No one says  otherwise. A documentary film critical of a potential Presidential candidate is core political speech, and its nature as such does not change simply because it was funded by a corporation. Nor does the character of that funding produce any reduction whatever in the “inherent worth of the speech” and “its capacity for informing the public,” First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765, 777 (1978).

Indeed, to exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy. We should celebrate rather than condemn the addition of this speech to the public debate."

Scalia has it right. To the detriment of our public discourse, the 'class warfare' element of today's deeply partisan politics paints large, for-profit corporations as society's 'enemy.' Operating on that belief, some reject capitalism as the basis of our free society and would restrict free speech by restraining corporations from exercising that right.

Americans should reject that belief and premise if they support the Constitution. We should allow and encourage political speech of all kinds, but demand transparency in who pays for it.

No Constitutional amendment is necessary or desirable to constrain free speech in nothing more than a blatant attempt to muzzle certain speakers.

Some argue that the Constitution already provides Congress a remedy for constrain the Judiciary. Whether Congress would act under Article III, Section 2 to restrict the Judiciary

[ this part of Section 2: "In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make."] [emphasis added]

in the domain of political speech/spending is doubtful. After all, they are politicians who are financed by all sorts of 'special interests.'

Recession in 2012? Likely Says Hoisington Investment Management Company

Report by Hoisington Investment Management Company

This report is commented on by John Mauldin in his 'Outside the Box' newsletter this week and is also referenced in "The Big Picture" blog/newsletter by Martin Rithotlz

"...In highly indebted countries, governments have expansively taken resources from the private sector through taxing and borrowing. This leaves the private sector with less vigor to produce jobs and increase productivity, and subsequently wealth for its fellow citizens. This theory, which dates back to David Hume's essay, Of Public Credit published in 1752, is now being played out in real time in the United States. We judge that when an economy is expanding in such a meager fashion it is exposed to an increasing frequency of recessions. We expect such a recessionary event to emerge in 2012 [emphasis added]...."

The Rise of the New Groupthink - NYTimes.com

Support for the creative introvert! Groups are useful for some tasks, but truly useful work gets done when people can focus quietly and itently on the problem or issue they are working on.

Bouncing ideas off other people is essential, but inwardly motivated people do better with periods of solitude, deep thinking and intense work. They may participate in crowd-sourcing, but their well-thought-out ideas are better formed if first created alone, then tested with others.

"...But decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases. The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” wrote the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority....”"