Finally! The map I have long wanted to see: Which states send kids to private schools in large numbers.

It’s one of those obvious statistics that should have been easily accessible, but I’ve never had luck in finding it. I found the results corresponded with my biases pretty, though with some exceptions:

• I’m not surprised that it’s most prevalent in the northeast (broadly defined), though I would have expected it to go further east into Massachusetts and Connecticut and wouldn’t have figured that it would count Ohio. I suppose with Massachusetts having one of the best school systems in the country, it’s not particularly necessary. Perhaps also, Massachusetts sending many of its best and brightest to public schools may help keep it on the top of public schooling lists. Then again, Maryland has good schools and still a lot of people going to private schools.
• Less common in the South, excepting Louisiana. The Pelican State has a robust Catholic schools. I didn’t particularly expect Mississippi and Alabama to be outliers, and if guessing would have guessed that they’d have lower numbers than Dixie’s eastern seaboard.
• I would have been surprised by Wisconsin, though that came up during the recall elections and whatnot, that private schools were more common there. I’m not sure why.
• By far, the most surprising state was Nebraska. Really, I would have figured that the central column of states would be relatively similar. Instead Texas and the Dakotas are low, but the others are high. While Nebraska is the biggest surprise, I wouldn’t have expected Kansas or Missouri, either.
• It’s interesting, if not surprising, that both Utah and Idaho have such low rates. One can imagine an alternate history where the LDS has its own school system the way that Catholics have theirs. Instead, with the degree of social domination they have over Utah and eastern idaho, I suppose they had their Mormon schools in the public school system and having private Mormon schools would have been a duplication of effort.
• Hawaii. Huh. I’m not surprised, because I wouldn’t have hazarded a guess. But it does kind of stand out.
• There is less variation between the states than I would have guessed. You have some below the 8% cutoff so they could have next to none. There aren’t many at the higher end, though, and that surprised me a little bit. Off the deep end, though, it’s just Louisiana, Delaware, and Hawaii.
  

• Since Catholicism likely affects the rates, I am including a map with that data point to compare and contrast. Obviously, this is likely to be more pertinent in some places than others. For example, the higher rates in California are due no doubt to the higher Hispanic population, which may not track with private school attendance the same way that it would in Louisiana. It does a good job of explaining Louisiana, for example, and Rhode Island. Less so for the Hispanic states, and you would think that it would lead to higher rates than Massachusetts.

Some high-falutin’ math-wiz guy on the Internet thinks that PEMDAS is stupid:

For those of you who do not recall, PEMDAS is the shorthand for the order of operations in math. Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction.

Except that from the start, we were not taught that was a rigid order. To use parenthesis, it was: Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication or Division, and Addition or Subtraction. Judging by the comment section, this was the most common way of teaching it. No matter how many times people say “No, PEMDAS means you have to put Addition before Subtraction!”

He says that PEMDAS means that 8-2+1 is five. Except that I was taught by PEMDAS, and was taught that the answer is seven. I arrive at the right destination, but according to this guy the “wrong” way because I don’t expressly consider the -2 to be + (-2).

Which brings us to his larger critique, which is the algorithmic versus conceptual math debate. My own position is that concepts are important (I was indeed taught that “-2” is the same as “+(-2)”), but that you start with the “what” before moving to the “why.” That way, even if you don’t get the “why” you do at least understand the “what.”

More to the point, though, it makes me think of the whole vs phonics debate. Conceptual math is good for kids that are naturally good at or interested in math. It seems to be boosted by those same people, who seem to believe that if others understood math the way that they do they would be adept at it. Meanwhile, I think it will hobble the kids who will simply never understand the “why” by making learning the “what” more difficult.

Which is pretty much how whole language worked. Phonics was annoying for the verbally gifted because it was crude, unreliable, and forced-walking when they were capable of running. It, too, was a program advanced by the best and brightest and well-suited for bright kids. It was also a disaster for everyone else.

Since we seem to be moving towards the new way of doing things, I hope that I am wrong about this and it will indeed be the innovation that its proponents say it will.

New research suggests that when it comes to bullying, mostly-popular and semi-popular kids have it worse than the rejects. Among the interesting findings:

• Except for those at the very top, the higher you go the more (figurative) hits you will take.
• Even among isolated kids, the higher-status kids report depression, anxiety, and anger.
• Most forms of “instrumental targeting” are not physical in nature. The gender split here is exactly what you would expect it to be.
• An interesting buffer against same-gender targeting is having opposite-gender friends.

I’ve commented on that last part before. Cross-gender friendships seemed to something that occurred with more frequency the higher up the hierarchy you went. Unpopular kids had few, if any, opposite-gender friendships. Popular kids had many. As my own social prospects improved, I started to gain opposite-gender friends.

There are probably numerous reasons for this, but it does support an unfortunate cycle. Guys who spend less time with girls do not learn how to act with girls, which hurts not only their ability to get girlfriends but also their ability to make friends with girls. And on, and on. It’s my experience that a factor feeding into this is fear, on the part of girls, of potential romantic interest on his part. Certain guy types will point to this as proof of female fear of loss of cultural status by virtue of interest from the wrong guy, but I’d point out in response to that having someone unidirectionally interested in you can be stressful. Especially when he never actually gives you the opportunity to shoot him down, which in my experience happens quite a bit with undesirable guys.

I’m less certain why less popular lady types have difficulty making male friends since I have never been a less popular lady type. I would assume it is mostly related to unattractive women often simply being invisible to guys. Background furniture, as one friend put it. Further, in both directions, less popular people are disinclined to reach out in ways that make them uncomfortable, which going across gender lines often does.

Yet, as interesting as I find all of this, the study suggests a more complicated picture than the one I see. People up and down the hierarchy, apparently, have issues with a dearth of opposite-gender friends, and this leads to problems. Why? I would guess status markers here matter, but also because of the effect on dating prospects. Maligning another guy who has female friends means potentially alienating any friends he has from the dating pool, and maybe even friends of those friends. That supercedes intragender rivalries.

That would only work, however, if they don’t find the opposite-gender friend to be equally or more worthy of contempt. I remember in 10th grade theater class getting picked on precisely because of the female friends I had in that class. Female friends who were utterly outside the interest of the guys giving me a hard time. It’s honestly among the few times I remember being so targeted in my relatively bearable high school years.

That guys and gals higher up feel the assault more keenly is not actually terribly surprising. They have further to fall and all that. It’s also my experience that by the time you get to high school you can fade into the background if you so wish. At least, if you went to a big high school like I did. Thus making people of higher and thus more conspicuous social standing a more frequent target.

Starbucks is getting some good publicity for helping it’s employees go to college:

Arizona State is one of the nation’s largest universities and has grown rapidly in recent years. Crow said it has about 65,000 students enrolled in programs at the main campus in Tempe and others in the Phoenix area. Another 10,000, he said, are enrolled in online programs that began three years ago. The university has 40 online undergraduate degree programs, in subjects ranging from art history to electrical engineering.

The Starbucks initiative could help double the university’s online footprint. Crow, who is one of the nation’s more ambitious university leaders, said Arizona State’s online operation is of a scale comparable to those of Penn State University and the University of Maryland University College.

Crow said he was pleased to collaborate with Starbucks on a program that aims to deliver “a first-class college education.” Arizona State, he said, “has the vision, programs and scale to deliver it to Starbucks employees in every part of the country.”

Burt approves, as it coincides with his own views that employment should not be considered a contract.

I would have expected to respond to this sort of thing very favorably. And yet I find my actual response to be more mixed. Not that I think Starbucks is doing anything wrong here – not in the least – but that something is sort of amiss.

As far as online colleges go, Arizona State University has one of the most expensive programs. It’s been a general disappointment that brick and mortar universities have not used online education as a means to reduce costs (suggesting, in my view, a profit center). Especially so, though, witht he big name universities like Arizona State and Maryland. Others, owing perhaps in part to their lack of brand and the fact that they serve less wealthy states, have done better. While Arizona State’s online tuitions are $500 an hour, Troy University’s are closer to $300 or so and North Dakota is closer to $200 (with other North and South Dakota schools being between $200-300). The normal in-state tuition discrepancy isn’t nearly this large.

Starbucks, meanwhile, is a relatively premier employer for those in the service industry. Contrary to what some people think, it’s not actually easy to get a job there. Leaguer Michael Drew has reported as much, and that corresponds with my experience. So while you may be dealing with people who have been “reduced” to service industry jobs, you’re still dealing with a cut above the rest. And now they have easy access to a great school that seemingly put up cost barriers to everyone else.

And Starbucks is getting a tax benefit for doing so, as college tuition (similar to health insurance) is a tax-free form of compensation.

Which leads me to the niggling concern that as a stop-gap for us having to deal with escalating college costs, we may have price-insensitive employers striking deals (negotiated rates) with universities. Making yet another thing tied to who you can get a job with. With yet another bypass of dealing with the rising and inflated costs of university.

Note: FWIW, Mitch knows of my Will Truman identity and could be reading this.

Greeks have it good:

Researchers at Gallup believe they found a formula for a good life after college, and students in fraternities and sororities are more likely to follow it than most.

The polling firm interviewed tens of thousands of college graduates about their well-being after college. They found a few steps students can take in college that predict whether they will be thriving financially, socially, and in the workplace after they graduate. Put simply: “Find professors who excite you and make you care. Get very involved in an activity. Find a mentor. Get an internship. Work on a long-term project.”

Students who were in fraternities and sororities were more likely to do all five — and more likely to say they had a sense of purpose at work, that they had strong connections to friends and family, and that they like where they live, Gallup said this week.

You always have to worry about confounding factors, even if they control for the most obvious ones. This definitely strikes me as one of those cases where the confounding factors may not be measurable.

Even keeping that in mind, though, I believe it. Fraternities and sororities can often encourage the type of participation that sets people on the right course.

One of the surprises when we went to Clancy’s ten year reunion was that there were people there who not only knew of me, but had stayed in my house! Specifically, they were friends of my brother. When we were out of town, they had stayed in our place in Estacado for some reason or another. It was none-the-less strange at the meet-and-greet party when someone said “Dude, this is Mitch’s brother!”

Indeed I am. Small world.

Apparently, he was a part of the crew at Mitch’s bachelor party, and that was how he knew me by sight.

Mitch was never as socially awkward as I was, but he became someone else entirely aRightly or wrongly, I credit a lot of that to his joining the fraternity in college. The fraternity he joined is not actually a very big deal at the University of Deltona (DU), where he attended. I’m not even sure they even still have a house there.

His fraternity is, however, a really big deal at Southern Tech. It is one of the most well-known and is kind of infamous. It’s the sort of fraternity that I never would have gotten into… except for the leg up I might have gotten by virtue of having a brother who was not only a member (at DU) but was its treasurer. I don’t know how well that would or would not have translated into membership at the Sotech chapter, but I sometimes think it would have made a huge difference.

I am not particularly “fraternity” material, in many respects. My saying “it’s not for me” would surprise nobody. But my brother did invite me to various fraternity events at DU and I had a whole lot of fun. I did like to drink! I did enjoy being in the company of ladies.

Even so, the very thought of joining a fraternity is well outside my comfort zone. Before he thrived in one, I would have guessed the same of Mitch. Which is sort of the rub. Perhaps pushing me outside of my comfort zone would have spurred enormous growth. It might have expanded my comfort zone to the point that I would be a different kind of person with a more society-preferred public persona. I might be less the kind of person that says things like “society-preferred public persona” and more like a non-alien that people are more comfortable around.

A lot of what I am thinking about by people, of course, is girls. Especially as I used to think about it before I found my happy ending. These days, though, it has less to do with that and more to do with the difficulty I find in meeting people more generally.

I sort of chose my path, and my path was along the lines of “weird dude.” Bird of rare plumage. Different drummer beatmarching. However you want to put it. Which maybe it was always supposed to be. Yet though it often doesn’t feel like it, I have a lot in common with my brother who turned out very differently from me.

Were our differences always there? Or did I just never join a fraternity?

Clancy and I took a trip back home to go to her high school reunion at the Deltona Leadership Academy for Math, Arts, and Sciences.

Clancy went to a special high school, which exist across the south and elsewhere, that caters to the gifted and talented. These state-run schools are usually attached to a second or third-tier college, where the students live and attend class during the school year. Though not a happy time for her, high school was nonetheless a particularly special time for her. Gifted and talented students from all across the state descending on a single institution.

It’s not just about being smart, though. A lot of the students are there for a reason. They’re people who decided, along with their parents, that going to high school hundreds of miles away was preferable to going to their local school. This might mean that their local school isn’t very good. It’s often that they have social problem. There is a very high misfit quotient. Which, for a misfit like Clancy, can be Heaven on Earth compared to a more typical school.

Clancy’s class in particular was of the more revolutionary variety (their class song was, in fact, Revolution) and the school actually clamped down in direct response to her class. They started seeking out kids of a straighter lace. The pendulum would eventually swing back with a discussion about what the school was actually all about, but Clancy’s sister attended a very different DLA than she did. For all of the headaches caused by her class, though, they also boasted by far the highest alumni giving amount of any of the classes that were there. While the gifted and talented aspect of it was relevent, the fact that a lot of kids found themselves at home, in a way, may have been an even bigger deal.

The contrast with my own school, and my own reunion, was stark. At my reunion, they didn’t even bother asking for money. We had a conference room of a hotel where maybe a hundred or so kids out of a class of about a thousand showed up. Her school was an academy while mine was a warehouse.

I don’t mean to sell my own school short. We were largely the children of engineers, doctors, and businesspeople. We were collectively arguably more privileged than Clancy’s class. We didn’t have to go very far.

More to the point, I have always appreciated the sheer size of my high school. It’s one of the largest 100 in the country today, and it’s smaller today than it was when I went there. I was far more prepared for college than most of my college classmates, despite the fact that I didn’t take a single honors course.

But mostly, I appreciated the school’s size giving me the ability to fade into the background and find my sort, which will mathematically exist in some number. I tend to like my large high school like I like large cities. A smaller and tight-knit school is fine, as long as you are a part of the cloth. In a place like the Deltona Leadership Academy, I might have been. But there aren’t many of those. But while I had friends at my school, I actually found “my sort” online (in the form of BBSes). Even in a school that large, I had to look elsewhere.

Schools like Clancy’s get criticism as a stark example of tracking. Removing smart kids from everyday schools. Others question whether tax money should be devoted to schools that cater to people who are definitionally advantaged. I disagree with that, through-and-through. Some of that for personal reasons – my awesome wife wouldn’t be who she is without that school – and partially for ideological reasons (the same ones that lead me to support tracking).

The DLA has a program where, even if you don’t live in Deltona, children of DLA alums can attend that school. I was at once happy and sad to hear that. Clancy has said that if whatever state we end up in has such a program, and our children want to attend, she would want them to be able to. Intellectually, I agree. Sentimentally, that would mean losing the kids right at the point where they are becoming the most interesting! A little piece of me harbored the thought that such a decision may not be necessary because we may not live in a state where such a program exists. Now, it doesn’t matter where we live, and instead of hundreds of miles away it might be thousands.

If I were to argue against it, it wouldn’t be an argument that I would win. It shouldn’t be, really.

Texas is notoriously stingy with its education spending, usually falling somewhere in the bottom of per-pupil spending. But not some districts and not when it comes to some things. Allen, Texas, a wealthy suburb of Dallas, famously spent $60 million on a high school football stadium that’s larger than some college ones. What does $60,000,000 buy you? Not much, apparently:

Allen ISD officials said Monday that design flaws appear to have contributed to problems with cracking of concrete at the district’s new $60 million stadium, prompting them to close the stadium for the next football season.

Previously, PBK Architects, which designed the stadium, said the problems in the concourse level were probably caused by shrinkage in the concrete.

But an analysis commissioned by the district shows engineers have found design deficiencies at the concourse level, according to documents released to The Dallas Morning News.

Partial findings by Nelson Forensics indicate that some support structures were not designed in a way that would hold the weight anticipated on that level of the stadium.

The Allen Eagles are the state champions in their division.

Lest we think that this is about Texas and their love of football, the same school district is spending almost $40,000,000 on a bus barn.

Frustrated Fathermade some news when he wrote a letter to a teacher expressing frustration over the new style of teaching math:

I have a bachelor of science degree in electronics engineering which included extensive study in differential equations and other higher math applications,” he wrote. “Even I cannot explain the Common Core mathematics approach, nor get the answer correct.

Mindful Mathematician responded:

The “new” methods you’re seeing are not being taught. They are methods that students naturally invent. Just the way that mathematicians invented them before our formal mathematics system existed. Believe it or not, simplicity and efficiency are at the forefront of our classroom discussions EVERY day. We are guiding students through their own sense making methods not only to understand numbers and operations but to find the most efficient methods for each problem.

I was first confronted with the brave new world of math teaching when I was doing sub-work. I ended up writing a post about it. The method taught in Arapaho schools, “Cluster Math” appears to be mildly different from the worksheet, but the thought behind it seems to be the same. Old Math was strictly algorithmic. As MM says, you didn’t always know why you were doing what you were doing. You just learned how to do it. It’s not quite rote memorization as MM suggests, but unlike the new stuff it is fixated more on getting the right answer than understanding why it’s the right answer.

The algorithmic method is still what I prefer. That’s not mutually exclusive with other ways of getting the answer and indeed, sometimes the math I do in my head actually more closely resembles what is being taught. I do think, though, that it was best for me that I went through algorithmic and came out the other side.

A few people scoffed at Frustrated Farent for making a mistake in his own work. The Frustrated Parent actually sees it as a sign that the new way is deficient, which isn’t quite right. Critics of FF suggest that he shouldn’t be saying much since he himself is prone to error. The thing is, though, my somewhat limited experience in Arapaho demonstrated to me that error-proneness is precisely the problem with the new method. As I previously described it:

Kids try it out one way, hit a wall, then start over. Before you know it, they have multipliers or 38 written down all over the place and when it comes time for the final addition, they don’t know which counts. In the above case (38×27), his answer was over 2,000.

Maybe the new new math isn’t prone to this sort of error. I do know that for me, knowing the best and quickest way to get the right answer helped me figure out other ways to get to that answer. Perhaps that’s redundant in the Age of the Calculator (on your phone, which you have on you at all times). For my own part, since I am very much the sort of person that forgets which 38 gets applied to which problem, I am not at all optimistic that any method other than the one I was taught would have worked as well (though the Lattice Method, which I was also taught, was fun).

For other kids? I don’t know. I do know that I am a bit disturbed by the Culture War aspect of this. That includes parents high-fiving FF for the wrong reasons (and I do think some are) but also those scoffing at any skepticism towards the new teaching as being anti-math or anti-education. And/o making fun of their computational errors.

According to the New York Times, collegiate athletic costs are rising. On hearing this, you’re probably thinking of the Big Names like Michigan or Texas that are flush in TV money to spend extraordinary amounts of cash on sports. But that’s not quite it. You might be thinking of those just outside the window spending like hell to get inside, like East Carolina or UTSA. That’s not quite it, either. A lot of the growth is occurring at some of college sports’ lowest levels:

For years, the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, a watchdog group of academic leaders and others, has been documenting, and deploring, the race in sports expenditures at the most competitive level, Division I. But this report is believed to be the first that also compares educational spending and athletic spending, over time, at Division II and III schools and at community colleges. {…}

Using data from the United States Department of Education, the N.C.A.A., and its own surveys, the association paints a sobering picture in its report, titled “Losing Focus,” of a sector in which the growth in educational spending trails far behind that of athletic spending — especially at community colleges and Division II and III institutions.

Does every school need a football team? But that’s not exactly it, either:

The fastest growth in athletic spending was at Division III schools without football programs, where median inflation-adjusted spending for each student-athlete more than doubled from 2004 to 2012.

During discussions about whether college athletes should get paid, we often forget that the vast majority of them compete from schools we’ve never heard of. Few reports on college sports really surprise me, but this one actually does. The vast majority of the time D2 and (especially) D3 schools aren’t among those angling for more lucrative conference situations. They’re not caught in bidding wars for high-profile coaches. It seems to me the most expensive thing they can be doing is starting football, and those aren’t even the ones that are hardest hit.

Granted, schools at those levels have lower baselines from which growth can occur. In numerical amounts, the rises from Michigan down to Old Dominion down to Abilene Christian College are probably rising faster Louisiana Centenary (and probably rising faster in direct relationship to how familiar with them we are. Even so, it’s quite odd to me that there is a rat-race that far down. Then again, I regularly hear people express exasperation that colleges care whether they are in the Sun Belt or Conference USA which is a distinction that makes a huge difference to the schools involved. So maybe there is a rat race through and through.

An issue making the rounds involves an applicant who was offered a faculty position at Nazareth College only to have it rescinded when she tried to negotiate. Specifically, after stating she was excited about the opportunity she asked for:

1) An increase of my starting salary to $65,000, which is more in line with what assistant professors in philosophy have been getting in the last few years.
2) An official semester of maternity leave.
3) A pre-tenure sabbatical at some point during the bottom half of my tenure clock.
4) No more than three new class preps per year for the first three years.
5) A start date of academic year 2015 so I can complete my postdoc.

And Nazareth College thanked for the email and her interest but responded thusly:

The search committee discussed your provisions. They were also reviewed by the Dean and the VPAA. It was determined that on the whole these provisions indicate an interest in teaching at a research university and not at a college, like ours, that is both teaching and student centered. Thus, the institution has decided to withdraw its offer of employment to you.

Slate’s Rebecca Schulman is outraged:

How dare this “women” think she could attempt to secure a better life for herself and her family? In this market, if a university wants her to wade around in pig crap, her only counteroffer should be: “Should I bring my own snorkel?” Any beginning academic who tries to stand up for herself is lunch for the hordes of traumatized ivory-tower zombies, themselves now irreversibly infected with the obsequious self-devaluation and totalizing cowardice that go by the monikers “collegiality” and “a good fit.”

Heebie-Geebie, a professor at a small liberal arts school in Texas (and an avowed liberal) disagreed:

At Heebie U, if she made these queries, it would truly indicate that she is woefully out of touch with what kind of institution we are. I would be flabbergasted if a candidate followed up a campus visit and offer with this kind of list, because it’s so wildly outside of our financial abilities or what anyone else gets. I would think “This candidate is genuinely not interested in being at this kind of institution – she thinks she has gotten an offer from a far wealthier, more prestigious institution than we are, and she will go back on the job market very quickly if she comes here.” In other words, what the response from Nazareth said.

When we were living in Deseret, we happened to live at the doorstep of Deseret State University. A whole lot of my coworkers went there and more than a few had spouses that worked there. One person who was in touch with faculty recruited described the process as an effort primarily to weed out those who weren’t really interested in the job. They’d offer to take applicants hunting, fishing, or hiking. They’d take them to see community theater. That was as important as anything they had to say about their academic profile. If they demurred or were bored, then they probably weren’t a good fit. Among the hundreds or thousands of applicants for every openings, they felt they could find someone who was and who actually wanted to be in the rural Mountain West.

As such, I sympathize with Nazareth’s concerns here. The daylight between this applicant and the next applicant was not so great. And an offer made can be rescinded before it’s accepted (afterwards, it gets more complicated).

One of the things that crossed my mind, though, was why this email revealed something that the interview process – sufficiently extensive that they felt comfortable extending an offer – didn’t. Whose side I am on depends almost entirely on whether Nazareth is re-evaluating its interview process. Because if an email of requests can throw it off, clearly something went wrong. The nature of the job was not adequately conveyed or they did not probe the applicants enough about what they were looking for. The only other explanation is that the applicant mislead them. But if the applicant gave one impression during the interview, it doesn’t seem to me that it should be rescinded on the basis of an email. At the least, you would want to probe further, I would think.

It’s easy to look at this as a situation specifically regarding humanities academics and why did they major in that and yadda yadda, but this situation isn’t entirely unique to academia these days. Actually, though, my wife ran into a similar situation.

She was flown out twice to interview for a job. She came close to getting it and in retrospect we believe that the sticking point was that she was asking for too much. Not demanding too much, mind you, but asking for things that signaled to them that she wasn’t actually a good fit. It came as a blow when they took a pass. I hesitate to say that they were right in making the decision that they did, but I do understand where they were coming from. And it did work out best for us because the things she hated about the job in Arapaho were actually less favorable at the other job. The only benefit is that it would have been clear about six months in, rather than a couple of years in, that Clancy’s career path needed an adjustment.

So hopefully W (the rejected applicant from the article) will find the sort of job she is looking for at an institution where these sorts of questions aren’t so alien.