A less-than-mediocre newspaper column about an Idaho education ranking

On July 13, 2018 there was a press release from the Idaho State Board of Education titled Idaho ranked in the top five states for college readiness by national publication and another press release from the Idaho State Department of Education titled Idaho students’ college readiness ranks state in top 5 of national report. Both releases linked to an article from U.S. News and World Report on July 12, 2018. The State Board link leads to the U.S. News article, then can be followed to the full list. The State Department of Education article goes directly to one slide instead.

A week later, on July 20 th Wayne Hoffman had an article on the Idaho Freedom Foundation web site titled State education officials tout mediocre college-readiness ranking. The same article appeared on July 24th as an opinion column at the Idaho Press Tribune.

Mr. Hoffman began by saying:

“Parents, students, and competent teachers deserve better than a public education system that celebrates mediocrity. That’s what they got last week when the state’s top education officials hailed a report that ranks Idaho No. 5 nationally for college readiness of its graduating high school seniors.

The ranking comes from U.S. News & World Report, which looked at college-entrance test results to determine which states produce the best prepared-for-college high school students. Idaho was singled out for being the only Western state in the top ten.  

Public schools superintendent Sherri Ybarra called it ‘great news, affirming our belief that Idaho schools are doing a good job of preparing students for post-high school success, even as compared to most other states.’ Dr. Linda Clark, the State Board of Education president, also cheered the news. However, upon review of the ranking criteria, the cheering should stop.

The Gem State got its ranking because 55 percent—yes, only 55 percent—of its high school seniors met college-entrance exam benchmarks. According to U.S. News & World Report, the benchmarks ‘represent scores students would need to achieve in order to have a 75 percent chance of earning a C or better in a related college course.’ Some might argue, as I do, that 55 percent isn’t exactly a stellar number by any measure. If 55 percent of your business’s products were failing, you’d fire people. In public education, one breaks out the champagne and serves up self-congratulatory accolades by press release.

It gets worse. U.S. News & World Report also noted that just 36 percent of Idaho high school students were able to meet the benchmarks on the math portion of the college entrance exams. In other words, some two-thirds of Idaho school students aren’t ready for college mathematics. Neither Ybarra nor Clark acknowledged this fact in their respective press releases. The State Board noted the issue when I posed follow up questions (the Board wants the figure improved, more money will help, a spokesman said). Ybarra’s office ignored questions about the statistic.” 

As is usual, Wayne didn’t bother to link to the press releases he criticized or to the U.S. News article. Nor did he check the dictionary definition for mediocre – “of moderate or low quality, value, ability, or performance” which clearly DOES NOT apply to a ranking of 5 out of 50 (top ten percent). And his whine in his fourth paragraph that: “If 55 percent of your business’s products were failing, you’d fire people” instead should be 45 percent. His fifth paragraph omitted the other statistic from The U.S. News article which had said:

“Students in Idaho performed far better on the writing portion of the SAT than the math section. Based on the results, around 63 percent of students were prepared for writing-related courses, while only 36 percent met the benchmark for math courses.”        

Neither Wayne Hoffman nor the State Board of Education or State Department of Education put that ranking of 5th into a broader context. But Kevin Richert did in an IdEdNews article on July 16, 2018 titled Analysis: A closer look at Idaho’s ‘College-Ready’ ranking. Kevin noted that there were other overall rankings both for K-12 (#25) and for higher education (#33).

What we should look at is the more detailed rankings for both Idaho and our six neighbors – Montana and Wyoming to our east, Washington and Oregon to our west, and Nevada and Utah to our south.  

Rankings for Pre-K to 12 are shown above in a table. There are six factors, only one of which is College Readiness. We did poorly for the other factors twice #4 and twice #5. Idaho’s overall ranking of 25th in the country was exactly in the middle, so we really were mediocre (as was our neighbor Washington at 26th). But we were #3 compared with our neighbors –  beaten by both Montana (#10) and Utah (#20).      

Rankings for Higher Education are shown in another table. Here there are five factors. We did  poorly when compared with our neighbors – twice we were 5th, 6th, and 7th and overall a dismal 7th (and 33rd in the entire country).

Rankings are a simple way of keeping score, but do not reveal if adjacent states are close or far away from each other. You need to compare the actual numbers. For example, the bar chart shown above has 2016 milk production for Idaho and its six neighboring states. Without looking at the actual figures you’d have no way of knowing that Idaho produced more milk than all our neighbors put together.  

And similarly, when you look at the Top Ten states for milk production in 2016, California was way ahead of everyone else, followed by Wisconsin. Idaho came in 4th but was barely behind New York. Behind us there was almost a three-way tie between Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

I don’t think that was me

After a decade of blogging, I’m used to getting a variety of emails. But one recent sequence took me by surprise. That person asked if I recalled having commented about dyslexia on a particular web site, and then having had that comment deleted by the owner. (He has his own blog about dyslexia). He said his comments on that other web site were made below mine and also were deleted. I did not recall ever having either been to that web site or even having been very interested in that topic. There is no label for dyslexia on this blog, and a Google search found no mention of the words dyslexia or dyslexic. (There is a label for stuttering though).   

Every week I get several public relations emails touting forthcoming or recently published books. Some even offer to provide me with a review copy, or to set up an interview. The polite ones have an Unsubscribe feature, which I use quite often. For those that do not, I sometimes reply including the graphic shown above.

Bad advice about getting rid of instruction manuals

When I log off my Hotmail account, I get to view gems like an article from Bob Larkin at Best Life on July 10, 2018 titled 50 things no man over 50 should own. Item # 23 was:

“Young guys cling to their electronics manuals with white knuckles, terrified they’ll need them if something goes wrong with their TV or computer. But by 50, you realize those manuals are pretty much useless after awhile. If you don’t know where the on-off switch is by now, you never will."

After setting up that electronic gizmo you won’t need the quick start guide anymore. They showed you where to plug in the cables, and how to find the power switch. Toss it.

But either now or much later the full instruction manual (which you might have to download) can be very handy. On May 20, 2018 I blogged about More nightlight technology – default settings and doohickeys. That post discussed how I searched the .pdf file of the manual for my new Roku TV to find how to shut off the annoying bright white LED. On a computer there might be a motherboard battery that eventually needs replacement. You really should RFTM (Read That Fine Manual).

My Weber natural gas grill quit working early this summer. When I looked in the manual I found out that to get at (and clean) the air inlet screens for the burners I just had to pull off the control knobs and remove the horizontal sheet metal cover.  

The man reading was adapted from an image at the Library of Congress.

Body movement tips for public speakers from Andrew Dlugan

On July 22nd there was an excellent blog post by Andrew Dlugan about Body movement tips for public speakers. He focused on what you should (and shouldn’t) do with your lower body rather than hand gestures or facial expressions. (Back on September 16, 2015 I had blogged to Please look at Andrew Dlugan’s Six Minutes blog about speaking and presentation skills).

You shouldn’t look like a clumsy giant attempting a ballet dance, as is shown above. Andrew said to avoid these seven things:

1]   Pacing back and forth (oscillation #1)

2]   Swaying or rocking front to back (oscillation #2)

3]   Yo-yo-ing between screen and laptop (oscillation #3)

4]   Tripping over anything or falling off stage

5]   Any movement that could result in injury

6]   Any movement that leads to an awkward or revealing position

7]   Any full-body movement that distracts while you deliver key lines

ATK and RDX both are acronyms with multiple meanings

A few days ago I received an email from America’s Test Kitchen titled Don’t miss the first ever ATK Seattle EATS festival! (I am on their mailing list because I bought my wife a copy of their TV Show Cookbook for her birthday). But when I think of the acronym ATK, it means the stock trading symbol for Alliant Techsystems – who in 2001 had acquired Thiokol and later became Orbital ATK. Thiokol is famous for having made the huge Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters, one of which is displayed horizontally in front their Utah facility west of Brigham City, as shown above. The top image had appeared in my May 26, 2008 blog post titled “Rocket science” for speech topics.

At a stop sign last week I noticed an Acura RDX. That luxury crossover sport utility vehicle (SUV) first appeared in 2007, as shown above. It was one of many vehicles (including my Honda Fit) which had defective Takata air bag inflators – that were recalled because some had exploded when activated. I had blogged about the recall on April 14, 2016 in a post titled How not to communicate – Honda told me my car is literally da bomb.

I don’t think those in marketing at Acura bothered to check what else the acronym RDX could mean. But from way back in the 1940s RDX also referred to the Research Department eXplosive more powerful than TNT - developed by the British. I had read about RDX in the 1968 M.I.T. Press paperback version of James Phinney Baxter 3 rd’s 1946 book about the World War II Office of Scientific Research and Development, Scientists Against Time. In his chapter on New Explosives and Propellants he described how 340 tons per day of RDX was produced by Tennessee Eastman in a huge plant near the town of Kingsport. A mixture called Torpex which contained 42% RDX, 40% TNT, and 18% powdered aluminum was used in the gigantic 12,000 lb. Tallboy bomb shown above.   

Acronyms – LOL, LMAO, and LMFAO

There was an article by James Morgan at BBC News on April 8, 2011 titled Why did LOL infiltrate the language? As shown above, the acronym LOL sands for Laughing Out Loud. The article also included:

“OMG! LOL’s in the OED. LMAO!”

which means:

Oh My God! LOL is in the Oxford English Dictionary. Laughing My Ass Off!

(There also is an escalation to LMFAO). One of the problems with acronyms is that you need to be very sure of the meaning before you use them. The article mentioned a mother who thought LOL instead meant Lots of Love and wrote in a message that:

“Your grandmother has just passed away. LOL.”

At Wikipedia there is a List of U.S. Air Force acronyms and expressions which says the acronym PING means Person In Need (of) Graduation - a derisive term for a student. But when I arrived for tech school at Sheppard Air Force Base in 1972 it instead meant someone even lower, just a prospective student. They were considered a Person In Need (of) Guidance, one who just had arrived that week and was waiting to start classes next Monday. PING supposedly also described the sound which you would hear if you hit a prospective student on the side of their empty head.  

Advice about feedback from Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

At Netflix I have been enjoying watching the current (tenth) season of Jerry Seinfeld’s TV show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. In Episode 2 Dave Chapelle says:

“For most people, not caring about the scrutiny of other people is one of the hardest things to do. I would even say harder than public speaking itself.”

In Episode 5 there is a longer exchange between Brian Regan and Jerry about evaluations by critics. It’s way more useful advice than the 1993 comedy routine public speaking coaches keep repeating:

“Jerry:  It is one of the comforts of comedy, I think, that almost never do people who are really good not get anywhere. Almost never.

Brian:  And I think it’s because of the objective response.

Jerry:  Right.

Brian:  No one can take away the laughs.

Jerry: Right.

Brian:  If it was just acting, it’s subjective and someone could say, ‘they’re not that good. They don’t have this. They don’t have that.’ But if you go on stage and make people laugh, nobody can say, ‘They’re not laughing.’

Jerry:  That’s what’s so funny to me when you get a negative review, which we all get from time to time. And you want to say…’They’ve already voted. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you didn’t like it, but the vote – We took a vote that night, and out of 2,000 people – I know you got this job at the newspaper, but it doesn’t mean anything.’

Brian: ‘It’s too late.’ You’re gonna go back and tell those people not to go in the past to the show they laughed at. Don’t. If you have a time machine, I’m telling you, don’t get in it and go back to Friday.

Jerry:  Yeah.

Brian:  I’m trying to make the audience laugh, and then – I’m not trying to please some guy at a typewriter, you know?

Jerry:  Here we go again. There’s no typewriters any more, okay? Speaking of time machines, you need one. And set it to ‘present.’ “

The microphone image came from Wikimedia Commons.