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rePost::What Makes a Great Teacher? | Amanda Ripley

On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math.
One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor’s math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked.
The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so.
At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools—not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it’s worth noting, not a very hard one).
After a year in Mr. Taylor’s class, the first little boy’s scores went up—way up. He had started below grade level and finished above. On average, his classmates’ scores rose about 13 points—which is almost 10 points more than fifth-graders with similar incoming test scores achieved in other low-income D.C. schools that year. On that first day of school, only 40 percent of Mr. Taylor’s students were doing math at grade level. By the end of the year, 90 percent were at or above grade level.
As for the other boy? Well, he ended the year the same way he’d started it—below grade level. In fact, only a quarter of the fifth-graders at Plummer finished the year at grade level in math—despite having started off at about the same level as Mr. Taylor’s class down the road.
This tale of two boys, and of the millions of kids just like them, embodies the most stunning finding to come out of education research in the past decade: more than any other variable in education—more than schools or curriculum—teachers matter. Put concretely, if Mr. Taylor’s student continued to learn at the same level for a few more years, his test scores would be no different from those of his more affluent peers in Northwest D.C. And if these two boys were to keep their respective teachers for three years, their lives would likely diverge forever. By high school, the compounded effects of the strong teacher—or the weak one—would become too great.
via The Atlantic Online | January/February 2010 | What Makes a Great Teacher? | Amanda Ripley.

Excellent Read!!!

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rePost::Marginal Revolution: The charity tax

The charity tax
The estimated social pressure cost of saying no to a solicitor is $3.5 for an in-state charity and $1.4 for an out-of-state charity. Our welfare calculations suggest that our door-to-door fund-raising campaigns on average lower utility of the potential donors.
via Marginal Revolution: The charity tax.

We hate not doing/giving, but we don’t have enough resources to be very generous. This produces guilt. This guilt lowers our self-image. I think this is the mechanism.

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rePost::The price exacted by the anti-vaccine movement : Respectful Insolence

The most shocking part of this video is that the dead girl’s doctor didn’t believe much in vaccinations and in fact encouraged her parents not to vaccinate. My recommendation: Sue the doctor for malpractice. Given that I’m one of the “tribe” and have just as intense a loathing for malpractice attorneys and malpractice suits as any other physician, you can be sure that if I say that about another doctor I really mean it and really consider the offense to be egregious. Any pediatrician who discourages recommended vaccines is very likely committing malpractice. In this case, a girl died as a result; so there is demonstrable injury as a result of this physician’s negligence. Sue his ass. Maybe if more parents started doing this when their children suffer or die from vaccine-preventable illness because their doctors discouraged vaccination fewer doctors would be so cavalier about such advice not to vaccinate.
via The price exacted by the anti-vaccine movement : Respectful Insolence.

This is

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rePost::OAP: " Top 5 Awesome Travel Experiences in 2010!" | OUR AWESOME PLANET

There are only two types of Pinoys in the country: those who prefer to travel to Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong Disneyland for vacation because it seems more economically convenient to do so, and those Pinoys who have fallen in love with the Philippines and have committed to discovering its beauty and hidden gems, proud to put local exploration before foreign travel. So, which one are you?
via OAP: ” Top 5 Awesome Travel Experiences in 2010!” | OUR AWESOME PLANET.

Excellent list of places to visit in the Philippines!

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rePost :: Lessons Learned

25. I remember dates in a year. As in the day I met my friends or the day when certain conversations took place. And so when that day comes in the following year, I can reflect back and see how far we've come – how things have changed and what we’ve been through.
extra: 26. My theory of NY and the 7-year-itch: I didn’t get it when some people I knew wanted to leave NY on their seventh year (I was on my third.) Now,four years later, I get it. I think every seven years, the face and landscape of New York changes….people live there then leave..to make space for a new wave of dreamers who are still wide-eyed wonderers. Because our dreams already became realities…
via Brain Gain Network.

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rePost::The Rich *Are* Different | Angry Bear

This is an intersting read. What could this bracket be for the Philippines?? Can we even make a similar graph from data BIR has? NSO ?
Sometimes wish a day has 2400 hours.(not too often)

That said, there is an interesting qualitative change in the structure of income that starts to happen around this cutoff for the “rich” which actually suggests that taxpayers above that threshold are rich in most important ways. The most recent (2007) tax stats from the IRS now reflect the peak of the late bubble and show that the $100K-$200K AGI bucket is the last one that more-or-less resembles middle-income categories in their dependence on labor as the all-but exclusive source of income. (Think of pensions and proceeds of retirement accounts as representing deferred wages or salaries.) This graph shows the shares of AGI from some major income sources, and the average incomes for various brackets. (*)
Sources of Individual Income, 2007 SOI Tax Stats
(May be embiggened by clicking here.)
Starting with the $200-500K category, the share of earnings from labor begins a marked decline. By the time you hit mid-six figures, average earnings from income, dividends, and capital gains become high enough to provide middle-class or better incomes without (necessarily) working. Tax returns in the upper-six-figure bucket, on average, show more income from other sources collectively than from salaries, and at the top of the income scale even interest and dividend income exceeds wages and salaries. (**) I suggest that if you can provide yourself with a better-than-average living without working, a very rare luxury indeed, you are in fact rich.
(Revised and slightly expanded.)
via The Rich *Are* Different | Angry Bear.

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rePost::Tenure for Prof. Sarah Raymundo: Rep. Walden Bello: "The Real Issue in the Sarah Raymundo Case: Academics versus Yahoos"

Rep. Walden Bello: “The Real Issue in the Sarah Raymundo Case: Academics versus Yahoos”
Read / download this letter in PDF: Walden Bello on Sarah Raymundo
The Real Issue in the Sarah Raymundo Case: Academics versus Yahoos
By Walden Bello*
Should President Emerlinda Roman fail to reverse the decision of Chancellor Sergio Cao to refuse tenure to Ms. Sarah Raymundo of the Sociology Department, this will be the final act of an academic tragedy.
Never has a tenure decision-making process been as flawed as this one. Allow me to cite the crucial points in this sorry affair:
– The majority of the department, by a margin of 7-3, votes to give tenure to Ms. Raymundo.
– The minority subverts this decision by manipulating Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Lorna Paredes into sending the decision back to the majority to justify—a move that was unprecedented. Confusion ensues.
– The College Executive Board (CEB) of the College of Sciences and Philosophy upholds the majority decision to grant tenure by 7-1, with three abstentions.
– The Chancellor disregards this decision of the college’s highest governing body and decides against tenure.
But the blatant irregularity of the process should not obscure the key issue in the Raymundo case. Beyond all the procedural controversies that surrounded the affair was the fundamental substantive question: did Ms. Sarah Raymundo deserve tenure on the basis of her academic record? It was the position of the minority on this issue that was, in effect, legitimized by Chancellor Cao’s decision to refuse tenure.
The minority in the tenured faculty never formally based its opposition to Ms. Raymundo on academic grounds. How could they since Ms. Raymundo had an excellent publications record and superb scores on teaching evaluations, indeed probably the best in the department? Instead, the minority focused on an issue that was marginal if not irrelevant to the tenure process: that Ms. Raymundo allegedly lied about her association with a press conference on two students that had been abducted by the military. In any context, this would be a minor disciplinary matter that would be handled as such. Ms. Raymundo’s guilt or innocence on this matter should have been ascertained in disciplinary proceedings separate from the tenure process. Instead, the minority elevated this alleged infraction, for which Ms. Raymundo’s culpability had not been settled, into their key and only consideration in their recommendation for denial of tenure, arguing that Ms. Raymundo did not deserve it for “ethical” reasons. This might be difficult for people outside the department to believe, but this alleged infraction was the only basis of the minority’s recommendation to deny tenure! Could Chancellor Cao really be serious in dignifying this position?
Why did the minority act the way it did? Let us no longer tiptoe around what was really involved in the Raymundo case, which made the stakes so high. In disregarding Ms. Raymundo’s academic achievements and blocking her tenure for an unproven allegation, the minority was exhibiting a behavior that had long frustrated their other tenured colleagues and the junior faculty. They did not care about academic excellence. Most of them had poor teaching evaluations from students and their publications records were practically non-existent. The last major sociology texts they read, according to some students, probably dated two decades back. Two were in fields that were only marginally related to the discipline of sociology. Only two of them were trusted enough to handle a graduate class by their colleagues. They were not concerned with intellectual exchange, which is the lifeblood of any academic department, and they had reduced departmental life into bureaucratic humdrum. For them, being a member in good standing in the sociology department meant conforming to rules, not intellectual achievement.
Most members of the minority were, in effect, non-performing assets or, to use a kinder term lifted from Jonathan Swift, yahoos. Conscious of the power conferred by tenure, most of them terrorized junior faculty with their demand for conforming to rules, being the cause of a series of departures of bright and motivated young faculty. Not surprisingly, Ms. Raymundo, with her intellectual achievements, was seen as a threat by this anti-academic faction that championed mediocrity–one whose addition to the tenured faculty would have tipped the balance in favor of the pro-academic grouping.
The pro-academic grouping within the senior faculty, in contrast, saw Ms. Raymundo as an indispensable asset to the department, as one who could contribute to the revival of intellectual exchange and innovation in the department. This grouping, which was composed of Profs. Laura Samson, Filomin Gutierrez, Gerry Lanuza, Josephine Dionisio, and myself, saw the battle over Ms. Raymundo’s tenure as having implications beyond her. We saw ourselves as fighting not only for the future of a brilliant young colleague but for the future of the department itself.
The majority’s will was thwarted by an irregular decisionmaking process that was capped by Chancellor Cao’s copout. But this painful story would not be complete without calling attention to the role of some members of the tenured faculty who had endorsed the original majority decision but abstained in succeeding decisions. Academics well known for their contributions to Philippine sociology, they proved to be ethically supine, unable to display the courage to stand up for their convictions. Unwilling to antagonize the minority, they retreated from endorsing Ms. Raymundo and tried to project themselves as being ”above the fray.” They threw Ms. Raymundo to the dogs, and they will forever have that on their conscience.
The Sarah Raymundo case is reaching its final stages. Will President Roman reverse a terrible miscarriage of justice and reassert UP’s commitment to academic excellence? Or will she, like Chancellor Cao, render the final act in yielding the sociology department to the reign of the yahoos?

*Walden Bello, PhD, now serves as a congressman for the party-list Akbayan! The author of 15 books and numerous papers and articles on international political economy and other topics, he was a member of the tenured faculty of the Sociology Department from 1997 until May of this year. An editor of the Review of International Political Economy, he won the Gawad Chancellor Award for Best Book in 2000 and was named the Outstanding Public Scholar of the International Studies Association’s Political Economy Section in its 2008 Convention in San Francisco.
via Tenure for Prof. Sarah Raymundo: Rep. Walden Bello: “The Real Issue in the Sarah Raymundo Case: Academics versus Yahoos”.

Bakit naisip ko bigla dito yung song na Little People you tube sa baba:

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Little Person by Jon Brion
I’m just a little person.
One person in a sea.
Of many little people.
Who are not aware of me.
I do my little job.
And live my little life.
Eat my little meals.
Miss my little kid and wife.
And somewhere maybe someday.
Maybe somewhere far away.
I’ll find a second little person.
Who will look at me and say.
I know you.
You’re the one I’ve waited for.
Let’s have some fun.
Life is precious.
Every minute.
And more precious with you in it.
So let’s have some fun.
We’ll take a road trip.
Way out West.
You’re the one.
I like the best.
I’m glad I found you.
Like hanging round you.
You’re the one.
I like the best.
Somewhere maybe someday.
Maybe somewhere far away.
Somewhere maybe someday.
Maybe somewhere far away.
Somewhere maybe someday.
Maybe somewhere far away.
I’ll meet a second little person.
And we’ll go out and play.

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rePost:: Farewell – Ambassador Kristie A. Kenney

*
Farewell
— By Ambassador Kristie Kenney, 5 January 2010
Although it seems like just yesterday that I arrived in the Philippines, nearly four years have gone by. And very soon it will be time for me to head to the United States to be with my family. It has been an extraordinary honor to represent my country in the Philippines, one of our oldest allies. I have felt very at home in the Philippines, perhaps because our two countries have so much shared history together. Our fathers and grandfathers shed blood together in World War II to protect our freedom. Millions of Filipinos live and work in the United States, and many Americans call the Philippines home. We are so much more than friends — we are family.
Our Embassy in Manila is large and diverse, reflecting the strong and deep relationship between our countries. I am so proud of the work our team does here. Over the past four years, we have seen new veterans’ benefits given to the wonderful and deserving Filipino World War II veterans. Those veterans have been like family to me, and I feel deeply honored to have heard their stories and shares time with them. They are true heroes to all of us. I am very happy that they received their new benefits during my time as Ambassador. And I am proud to have been made an honorary member of the Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor although I am well aware that I will never come close to matching their courage and valor. Visiting the site of the Leyte landing, Corregidor, the site of the surrender in Bataan, and spending time at the U.S. residence in Baguio, where the World War II peace in the Philippines was signed, are some of my most cherished memories.
My memories of the past four years are as diverse as the Philippines themselves. I will never forget the rich cultures of Mindanao or the proud traditions of the Ifugao. I have loved the smiling face of every child our education programs have helped. The look of joy and wonder as they experience the Internet for the first time is unforgettable. Or the dedication of the teachers who serve from small rural schools to large Manila universities. (Sorry if my readers have wearied of me talking about education, but I am still the daughter and granddaughter of public school teachers. I always love helping education and those who teach.) In the Philippines, I have seen the wonders of the oceans and become dedicated to helping protect our environment. I’ve snorkeled with whale sharks, been diving in aquariums, tested jeepney emissions, talked to fishermen about sustainable fishing, seen our Peace Corp volunteers energize communities to create marine protected areas, and watched our USAID team design great programs with Philippine partners to promote clean energy and clean waters.
American business continues to flourish in the Philippines. Whether on the retail end where I’ve watched Gap, Banana Republic, and Krispy Kreme (to name just a few) open hugely successful stores or in the business process outsourcing sector, which has American companies in nearly every region of the Philippines now. What an exceptional experience to watch Ford cars be assembled, or Kraft foods test new products, or see “call center” agents talk to American clients from Davao, Baguio, Quezon City or Tacloban. And while I am a fan of Filipino food (especially lumpia and mangoes), I’ve loved being able to eat in McDonalds or get a coffee from Starbucks across the Philippines.
I’ve seen conflict areas where ordinary citizens struggle to provide a decent life for their families and hope we’ve helped give them the infrastructure and education to succeed. I’ve witnessed the bravery of the Philippine Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police as they tackle the tough opponents of terrorism, crime, and worked to combat poverty. In times of natural disasters, our partnership with Filipinos –with the AFP, PNP, LGUs and with NGO groups – helped get relief to those in need whether in Manila, Northern Luzon, Iloilo or Bicol. The resiliency and compassion of Filipinos under the most difficult of circumstances is amazing and inspirational.
On a personal level, it has been a joy to hear the musically talented Filipinos. It has been great fun to share the Filipino passion for sports and to watch great college and professional basketball games. The legendary Filipino hospitality has welcomed me into homes across the country from the humblest provincial dwellings to the grandest Manila homes. I’ve learned from Filipinos to cherish family, no matter how great the distances between family members. I’ve learned from Filipinos to take time to celebrate the big and small moments in life and that in doing so, you create lasting memories.
President Obama has nominated Harry K. Thomas, Jr. to succeed me as the United States Ambassador to the Philippines. Harry Thomas is a career diplomat who has served as the U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh and has held leadership positions in Washington, D.C. as well as key positions in U.S. Embassies in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia. He is an experienced diplomat who is also a close personal friend of mine. He will be a wonderful United States Ambassador to the Philippines, and I know Filipinos will give him a warm welcome. His nomination is now pending before the United States Senate, which must confirm him before he can assume his duties in Manila.
This will be my last blog post as the United States Ambassador to the Philippines. I thank all who were kind enough to read and comment on my blog. It has been a privilege to represent the United States in the Philippines. I thank Filipinos throughout the world for the kindness and friendship you have shared with me and so many other Americans. And I hope our paths will cross again. Let me close with an old Irish blessing that has always been a favorite of my Irish-American family:
May the road rise up to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face
May the rain fall soft upon your fields
And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.
via Ambassador Kristie A. Kenney.

I have to confess that in my short life Ambassador Kristie Kenney has been the most accessible Ambassador sent to the Philippines in my view.  She shows in some ways how most future ambassadors have to be. The waning of US economic might means the old ways (hope to read THe End Of Influence to broaden my knowledge in this)  of diplomacy by US Ambassadors must change to a more collegial consensus building way, How equals treat each other. In this way Ambassador K Kenney save for a few blots in her record (subic rape case??) becomes the poster child of the new State Dept. I wish her and her family well, and may she be received in her next assignment , with the same warmth that we showed her, for she has shown that she deserves it. (I know how UGLY the previous paragraph was. I’m just really irked with something work related arrggh)

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rePost::What Should We Teach New Software Developers? Why? | January 2010 | Communications of the ACM

The Academia/Industry Gap
So what can we do? Industry would prefer to hire “developers” fully trained in the latest tools and techniques whereas academia's greatest ambition is to produce more and better professors. To make progress, these ideals must become better aligned. Graduates going to industry must have a good grasp of software development and industry must develop much better mechanisms for absorbing new ideas, tools, and techniques. Inserting a good developer into a culture designed to prevent semi-skilled programmers from doing harm is pointless because the new developer will be constrained from doing anything significantly new and better.
Let me point to the issue of scale. Many industrial systems consist of millions of lines of code, whereas a student can graduate with honors from top CS programs without ever writing a program larger than 1,000 lines. All major industrial projects involve several people whereas many CS programs value individual work to the point of discouraging teamwork. Realizing this, many organizations focus on simplifying tools, techniques, languages, and operating procedures to minimize the reliance on developer skills. This is wasteful of human talent and effort because it reduces everybody to the lowest common denominator.
Industry wants to rely on tried-and-true tools and techniques, but is also addicted to dreams of “silver bullets,” “transformative breakthroughs,” “killer apps,” and so forth. They want to be able to operate with minimally skilled and interchangeable developers guided by a few “visionaries” too grand to be bothered by details of code quality. This leads to immense conservatism in the choice of basic tools (such as programming languages and operating systems) and a desire for monocultures (to minimize training and deployment costs). In turn, this leads to the development of huge proprietary and mutually incompatible infrastructures: Something beyond the basic tools is needed to enable developers to produce applications and platform purveyors want something to lock in developers despite the commonality of basic tools. Reward systems favor both grandiose corporate schemes and short-term results. The resulting costs are staggering, as are the failure rates for new projects.
Faced with that industrial reality—and other similar deterrents—academia turns in on itself, doing what it does best: carefully studying phenomena that can be dealt with in isolation by a small group of like-minded people, building solid theoretical foundations, and crafting perfect designs and techniques for idealized problems. Proprietary tools for dealing with huge code bases written in archaic styles don't fit this model. Like industry, academia develops reward structures to match. This all fits perfectly with a steady improvement of smokestack courses in well-delineated academic subjects. Thus, academic successes fit industrial needs like a square peg in a round hole and industry has to carry training costs as well as development costs for specialized infrastructures.
via What Should We Teach New Software Developers? Why? | January 2010 | Communications of the ACM.

I’m looking for a new job. The problem is that I am slowly coming to the conclusion that to be happier at my new job; as opposed to the myriad of possible places to work at and work to do; I may have to create the job I would like. This frankly is extremely scary and in lesser ways exciting. I have no idea where this is going but I have to do this now.