A Society Can Be Judged By Entering Its Prisons.

California Governor Jerry Brown

Jerry Brown has my attention today.  He declared that the emergency conditions in California's prisons have ended. Brown credited realignment, which has basically meant shifting state prison inmates to the county jails, with reducing the scope of the problem. I've blogged about it previously, noting that the remaining portion of California's budget deficit can largely be explained by the requirement that 10,900 prisoners will be housed in out-of-state prisons in 2013, in order to deal with the overcrowding emergency. From a budget perspective, if Jerry Brown can get the federal courts to agree that the prison capacity crisis has ended, and allow the Governor to move those prisoners back into the State's prisons, he will have balanced the California budget this year. 

"Crime Rate at Historic Low"

Cal Facts 2013

California Legislative Analyst

available at http://tinyurl.com/a8paa6e

The problem Jerry Brown's discussing, while it is unlikely to be solved by the judges going along with his proposal, is one that it appears will be resolved as a result of other factors in the next few years.  The recent changes to three strikes, combined with realignment, have helped.  But the graph on the right is really what's driving the situation.  California, like the rest of America, faces continued declining rates of crime. As Richard A. Oppel, Jr. of the New York Times pointed out two years ago, no-one really knows why this is the case.  If anything, most experts had expected crime to pick up during the recent economic crisis, but the opposite actually occurred. I don't have any particular insight to why this has happened, aside from noting that whatever's causing it, the same phenomenon is occurring next door in Canada.

Brown's quotes are specifically interesting, though, because Jerry Brown almost certainly knows he's telling a whopping lie by saying California has "one of the finest prison systems in the United States." Brown is navigating through the last portion of what was a near-meltdown of California's government.  To paraphrase Viscount Snowden, truth is the first casualty in a crisis, and Dostoyevsky's observation that "a society can be judged by entering its prisons" is as true as it ever was.  California's prisons are institutions that, like the State, are stepping back from the precipice of an economic collapse. Things have gotten better, yes, but calling California's prisons the nation's finest is, rhetorically, almost certainly a bridge too far.

Dan Walters and Education Funding.

Dan Walters.

Dan Walters is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee.  While he's not exactly eye-candy to look at, his columns are a great resource for understanding what's taking place in Sacramento.  He's a bit iconoclastic and isn't beholden to any particular interest group, so I read him to get an idea where California's going politically in the next 12-24 months.

He's behind the curve right now, simply because the story has changed so much in the past two months.  But he's catching up.  His column today notes that the California budget situation has gotten much better (this after the Legislative Analyst reported the same two months ago), and that the new issues in the new year are, amazingly, going to revolve around how to spend revenue, rather than how to impose cuts.

"Significant Budget Shortfalls Since 2001"
Cal Facts 2013
California Legislative Analyst

available at  http://tinyurl.com/b6lw445

This will not be a small fight, particularly because, as he's noted over the past week, there are also serious and substantial efforts to revise Prop. 13.  Further, at the same time, Jerry Brown is attempting to change the funding formula for the educational system.  This would involve, crucially, increasing funding for ESL programs, which would be significant change for, at a minimum, schools facing a changing demographic profile. Dan points out these changes are possible because of the Democratic supermajority in the legislature (something that may not last long).

I bring it up to note that, for many Californians, the story regarding education has generally been nothing but cuts for a decade, perhaps longer.  This has led to fatigue -- the constant crisis has frustrated many, leading to a certain sense of defeatism concerning the ability of the State, ever, to provide adequately for K-12 education.

I sympathize with anyone that thinks that -- California politics have been anything but functional for thirty years and there's a sense that's crept in that the State will always be this way, and that serious change (let alone reform) is beyond the political's system's reach.  However, this time, it really does look like it's going to be different.

Finally, Dan's good at pointing to useful reference resources for people who are interested in governmental issues.  The graph at the right is one example of that, from the Legislative Analyst's "Cal Facts" publication.  For anyone who wants to get a foundational feel for these problems, the pamphlet is a good place to start, even if only for its explanation of the major propositions that affect (hamstring?) California's government ...

Coronagraphs and SVUSD.

Arthur Eddington's photograph
of the May 29, 1919 solar eclipse.
available at http://tinyurl.com/n46h3z

The photograph at the right is probably the most important one taken in the 20th Century. It was taken of an eclipse of the Sun by Arthur Eddington, on May 29, 1919, from the island of Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea, off the west coast of Africa.  In the upper right portion of the Sun's corona, you can make out a small dot, which is the Hyades star cluster.

The reason it was so important, was not because the position of the Hyades star cluster was wrong, although that was definitely the case. The Hyades star cluster has "moved" in this photograph when compared with all of the other stars in the sky -- but the problem was that it moved too much.  

Isaac Newton had predicted hundreds of years before that gravity could bend light.  He had even predicted how much the light would bend.  But in this rare instance, Isaac Newton was wrong -- the light from the star cluster had moved twice as much as he had expected. 

But someone else's theory was right -- a former Swiss patent clerk by the name of Albert Einstein.  The apparent movement of the Hyades star cluster was exactly the amount that Einstein's theory predicted when light traveled near the warp in spacetime induced by the Sun's gravitational field. 

OK, nice story, what's the point, John? 

This post isn't about relativity, or even really astronomy. It's about how this experiment was possible in the first place. The Moon, in an eclipse, functions as a natural coronagraph. Like any coronagraph, the moon allows the viewer to see the light from the corona of the sun (and the light from the Hyades star cluster), which would otherwise be hidden in the Sun's bright glare. Without the moon being in this position, measuring the degree of the apparent movement of the light (and the proof of general relativity) would have been well-nigh impossible. 

Why am I talking about this today? Well, over the past week or two, I've been looking at the test scores for Sonoma Valley's elementary schools, trying to develop a picture of what's taking place from the data.  In my last post, I used a very limited set of data to illustrate a point -- the overall rankings of the schools measured by API scores, and then the scores of a particular subgroup across different schools over time.  Those two pieces of data point in different directions.  

In talking over some of the comments made by some very intelligent people who reviewed the post on Facebook, it became clear that they were aware that I was using something akin to a "social science coronograph" to block out a particular piece of data, which was so bright and glaring that it would make it impossible to view what I'm really interested in. 

Ethnicity of Students, Hispanic or Latino
Sonoma Valley Public Schools
"Education Statistics of California," 

Google Public Data Explorer

available at http://tinyurl.com/ax4z937

I deliberately blocked out that piece of data, because, like the Sun itself in Arthur Eddington's experiment, it obscures more than it reveals.  But I don't want anyone to think I'm hiding the football here -- far from it -- it's just that this particular piece of data drowns out the signal.  

That piece of data is the graph at the right. It's the percentage of the population at each elementary school that is Hispanic or Latino. This graph is essentially the reverse of the API score decline graph I posted yesterday.  Google's setup isn't letting me graph ESL students, but the graph is essentially similar when you review it at the State of California's site. This demographic change happens to make the API scores vary wildly, which was one of the big reasons I picked a narrow subgroup when evaluating the schools over time. 

As you can see from the data, Sassarini, where I'm thinking about sending my daughter, is about 2/3rds Hispanic or Latino as of 2011. That's not a drawback from our family's perspective. My wife and I have been making an effort to ensure our daughters have the opportunity to learn Spanish, and perhaps the great overlooked point in learning a language is that you need to listen to it.  The fact that our daughter would thus be exposed to a great deal of Spanish on the playground is, frankly, a positive. I am, however, aware that there are parents that disagree.

But on the question of whether a school is improving or worsening in its job of teaching children like my daughter, the ethnic makeup of the school is irrelevant. And that's why, in making that determination, I pulled out a virtual coronagraph and blocked the glare from this graph ... it's not something that is inappropriate for consideration -- it's just that I don't think it reveals anything about the statistical performance at a particular school, and that's the thing I'm interested in measuring at this point.

There's a second issue that some of the comments were pointing out.  This was the fact that I left off the charter schools on these graphs, and that I didn't point out the scores of some of the specialty programs that exist in the school district, such as the dual immersion program at Flowery.  

The second point is more straightforward to address than the first -- the dual immersion students appear to be included in the raw Flowery numbers.  

The first point is nuanced.  The charters have unusual characteristics -- for instance, Woodland Star is a Waldorf school, and trying to measure a Waldorf school via something like an API score would be pointless and ultimately deceptive. If you want to understand a Waldorf school, you're going to need to meet the families involved.  I can tell you from experience that I am impressed with the Woodland Star families.  So, I would toss out the API score as a measure completely when evaluating Woodland Star. 

Sonoma Charter has a similar problem, but in the opposite direction. Sonoma Charter's Hispanic/Latino numbers are consistently around 15%, which is generally about half that of Prestwood.  When that issue is adjusted for, the remaining 16 point differential between the students at the two schools is modest at best and is probably irrelevant. But as a parent who takes Spanish education seriously for my kids, my evaluation of the quality of the school is impacted by the skewed characteristics of the population of the student body.  

Finally, on the point of whether test scores are a good thing for parents to look at -- I think they reveal a lot of things, many of which were not necessarily intended by the creators of the test.  Teaching to a test is always a concern, and a well rounded education is a means to an end -- the ability to function as an informed citizen in modern society.  Cram courses to learn how to fill out little bubbles on a Scantron can improve test scores but do little in terms of educating children.  

However, there are a lot of parents in Sonoma whose children will probably go on to national-level (if not international level) institutions for postsecondary education, and dealing with the reality of standardized testing is a necessary part of preparation for navigating those institutions. Scores should be taken with a grain of salt (or ignored completely when evaluating specific programs), but ignorance of the nature of the testing regime is probably more dangerous for parents and children in the long run. 

Sonoma Valley's Elementary Schools Are Better Than Ever?

Prestwood Elementary

As most parents are unsurprised to learn, almost all students in California's elementary schools are tested annually.  Based on those test results, every school is assigned an Academic Performance Index score (API) from 1 to 10.  Those scores are available on the Internet. Google's taken that data, and has integrated it with a web application called the "Google Public Data Explorer."

I have a 5-year-old daughter starting kindergarten in 8 months.  Our neighborhood school is Sassarini, in the Sonoma Valley Unified School District.  I've used Google's service to make some graphs of the performance of Sassarini in the state rankings over the last decade.

Statewide Ranks of Sonoma Valley,
Kenwood, and Rincon Valley Public Schools

"Education Statistics of California,"
Google Public Data Explorer

available at http://tinyurl.com/bz8y2rg

Sassarini starts at a 6 when I bought my home in 2004, but as of 2011, it has declined to a 1.  The drop in apparent quality isn't limited to Sassarini -- all the rest of the schools in Sonoma Valley show the same decline.  Even Prestwood, generally considered the best public elementary school, has dropped from a 9 to a 6 in that time period.

For comparison's sake, I reviewed the condition of the schools north of Sonoma Valley -- the schools in Kenwood and Rincon Valley.  None of those schools is below an 8 on the statewide rankings. Austin Creek, the closest Santa Rosa school to Sonoma Valley, is a 10.

Given the relative decline of the Sonoma Valley elementary schools in statewide rankings, I'd therefore expect that students at Sassarini who are similar to my daughter will, in general, score lower over time on standardized tests.

API, White Ethnicity, Sonoma Valley Public Schools

"Education Statistics of California," 

Google Public Data Explorer

available at http://tinyurl.com/al9rrd8

But the data says I'm wrong. The graph on the right demonstrates the API score for each school in Sonoma Valley, for the "white" ethnicity.  Flowery's at 843, Prestwood is at 840, and Sassarini is at 823.

These are essentially equivalent scores, and all of them exceed state requirements. And all are higher than they were a decade ago.

I realize there are a number of reasons that the ranking can decline while the API score for a particular subgroup may remain the same -- for instance, if there is a significant change in the population of the schools. But a change in the makeup of the student body does not strike me as supporting the conclusion that the quality of the schools has declined. If anything, the data indicates that the elementary schools -- all of them -- have improved ...

New York Times: Law Blocks ATF's Use of Big Data.

"Legal Curbs Said to Hamper A.T.F."

Goode, Stolberg et al., New York Times, Dec. 26, 2012
available at http://tinyurl.com/cbdbaes

The New York Times, like other news sources, is picking up on the fact that the Obama administration is preparing to overhaul how the Federal government learns about the potential for gun violence.

The description of the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF)'s ability to track gun purchases is positively ridiculous, when one thinks about how easy these things are for department stores like Target.  If they're really still using printouts and paper, that's a travesty.

The worst part, of course, is that the law is written so that the government agency is less effective.  After Newtown, the administration is (presumably) getting ready to propose extensively changing the law, which makes sense.

While I can imagine that there are a series of careful provisions that may be put in place, I think the government should make clear that not just ATF, but also state-level social service organizations, should always be given access, at the very least, to the same kind of information that is already possessed by the likes of Wal-Mart and Amazon.

Unintended Consequences of Makerbot.

Slashdot drew my attention to this Forbes story today, which made me shake my head in sadness.  Makerbot has always seemed to have the promise to transform the world -- as  Chris Anderson of Wired has described it, "[w]hat desktop fabrication represents is a laboratory for the future, not just of manufacturing but of stuff itself."

"3D-Printing Firm Makerbot Cracks Down ..."

Andy Greenberg, Forbes.com, December 21, 2012

available at http://tinyurl.com/caene6k

However, I think the Maker movement has now found its equivalent of the Internet's Rule 34. In short, if you give people a way to make things, someone will use it to create a gun, and using Makerbot to create automatic weapons is just about the worst idea possible.

I respect the effort to prevent electronic distribution of the designs, but that's not going to cut it, because darknets can move those around.  DRM on a Makerbot, which might prevent these designs from being used in the first place, is something that very bright people have been thinking about for a while. But the somewhat dismal history of DRM suggests DRM can, at best, mitigate, rather than prevent such problems.

Ultimately, we need to know more about the people prone to doing these things. If someone's trying to  print parts to create an automatic weapon, stopping them is important.  But so is letting the right person know they're trying to do it in the first place. 

DRM helps -- but the solution is probably going to involve Big Data ...

Lifehacker and Text to Speech.

Having to write every day means you end up becoming quite aware of your reuse of phrases, and the errors you make regularly.  Lawyers are certainly not immune to the phenomenon. So editing is a skill I have to hone, all the time.

Lifehacker had some nice tips on improving your writing earlier this week.  One is "read your text out loud." This makes some sense -- I agree with Lifehacker's argument that:

"The best writing sounds smooth—almost like you're speaking, without getting colloquial. So actually listening to your written syntax is one of the best ways you can catch areas with jangling phrasing."

Of course, under time pressure with a deadline, it's hard to do that. However, one tip I picked up from my brother, is to use a text-to-speech program to make your computer read the text out loud.  

My Mac has, built in, the ability to do that.  It's called Text to Speech, and it has a remarkable set of features (including a range of accents you can choose for the voice that reads your text). 

It may not make your writing perfect, but at least you'll have a fighting chance of detecting auto-replace substituting form for from ...