Wednesday, June 15, 2016

To Forecaster readers, and especially those who post comments on the various article threads via Disqus.

Attached below are thoughts I submitted on the Ed Beem op-ed item dealing with school budgets. None made the cut for appearing on the comment page.

I inquired to Forecaster management how their comment moderation works, and why some appear immediately, and others are locked away in 'pending' forever. The answer I got was that The Forecaster does not 'moderate comments.' But that an algorithm somewhere (Disqus? Beem?) can flag comments for review, at which point Forecaster staff gets involved.

Based on the results since then, I have to assume that The Forecaster has submitted parameters to Disqus for comments on published articles, or worse, that Forecaster editors defer to Eddie Beem to accept or reject comments submitted on his columns. From what they have told me so far, there is no other logical explanation for why these comments, which are less inflammatory that Eddie's original, are held off-line.

So from here on out, ask yourself how many meaningful comments are prevented from seeing the light of day, protecting Eddie's primacy in all things opinion related. How this can be permitted in the modern era is a great unknown, unless.....

And the rest of us have no idea how many of your insights have been stuffed away, out of sight, to protect Eddie's self-esteem.

Submitted Tuesday, June 14:

To update those of you who comment here, I drafted a lengthy response to Eddie's treatise on public schools, and it has been consigned to comment purgatory by Disqus. At this point, I have no evidence that Eddie has blocked it, but I have no knowledge of his authority in such matters.

It is true, of course, that he sees himself as the primary reason The Forecaster is a viable business. If this view is unfair, perhaps he'll intervene to see that the purloined comment gets posted here to demonstrate his fairness and openness.

The 'lengthy response' is attached below. It has been shown as 'pending' on Disqus for at least two days, and a second attempt to post it had the same result.

The following was submitted as a comment on Monday, June 13, but never posted to the Forecaster discussion thread; it was resubmitted less than 24 hours later, only to meet the same fate. That is, comment purgatory.

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Just for fun, I re-read Eddie's column after taking in his whining cum moral superiority 'finish' in his recent comment just below.

The last line in the column is this:

"We all benefit from good schools and an educated citizenry."

Think about that for a minute or two; it contains two bones of contention that have been at the very core of the government schools public discussion for decades and decades.

"Good schools."  "An educated citizenry."

Each could merit thousands of words in commentary and point-counterpoint, without even beginning to delve into the moral superiority that Eddie so frequently brings to his 'journalism.'

Let's take “good schools” first. In case you haven't noticed, the government schools establishment strenuously fights against anything that would objectively evaluate schools and those who run them and teach in them. There is a reason state and federal teachers unions are amongst the biggest donors to political campaigns. They want to own legislators at both state and federal levels so they can stop any efforts at all to bring transparency and accountability to government schools, and stop cold any school choice progress that would challenge their primacy at the public trough.

Perhaps Eddie will tell us how he knows Yarmouth schools are amongst the best in the country. Proud parents and gushing real estate salespeople mean nothing; they have no objective knowledge of the facts; pride (and worse) drives their views. Some years back, Beem claimed that Yarmouth H. S. was in the top 100 in America. I asked how he knew this, and as I recall, he cited a US News and World Report article, which listed the 'best 100 high schools in America.'

Turns out Yarmouth was in the top 100; the school my kids attended was significantly higher in the rankings. Presuming the magazine editors did not send reporters and experts to thousands of high schools around the US, I looked into how they did their ratings. Turns out it was largely based on the menu of advanced placement courses they offered to their students. Not teacher performance; not student outcomes; but curriculum options.

This is akin to the way Consumer Reports has evaluated products over the years. Rather than measure how well the product does what you want it to do, how good the materials are from which it is made, and how well it is designed and manufactured, they compare 'features' and other baubles of the competitive market place. After a few sorry experiences with coffee-makers and the like based on their advice, I realized just how useless their rankings were.

Want to move up in the national High School rankings? Submit data to the magazine that increases your AP course offerings compared to last year.

By the way, have you seen any international rankings of US Schools compared to other 'advanced, civilized countries?' If you have, you know that the US doesn't even rank in the top 10, and if I remember correctly, is on a downward trend in those listings.

Now let's talk about 'an educated citizenry.' A wonderful goal, but how are we doing? What do you think of the knowledge and skill level of young people you encounter in entry level jobs in your daily lives? Have you seen the articles about most colleges saying that something like 50% of incoming freshman need remedial course work before they can handle beginning college course work? Have you seen the reports of employers with ready jobs telling how the average applicant can't begin to meet

basic job requirements?

So, the dilemma is how to provide 'good schools' and 'an educated citizenry.' “areyoukiddingme” posted this recently:

Its an odd thing for me and EABeem to be mostly on the same page. But I think this all really misses the boat for the discussion. Much of the research on education spending concludes that spending and academic achievement are pretty much decoupled. So that means you have to dig into the details on what they are doing with the money. Mostly people don't do that and the waste factor is pretty high.

Eddie, of course, is a fan of the Starbucks theory of public education: the more it costs, the better it must be. Objective rankings of coffee are pretty much like objective rankings of schools; impossible to compare in any deterministic sense, especially when those in charge scream bloody murder if any form of performance measurement is proposed.

You know what they say: “you get what you pay for.” And they're right; if you pay teachers more every year, you get teachers who make more every year, for doing the same thing they did last year.

You have to wonder whether when Eddie needs work done around the house, he gets bids, and then goes with the highest bidder. Or whether he tells his wife to spend more on groceries so they can be better fed.

One more thing; when ever challenges to Eddie's assertions, and his certainty of his own infallibility, become more than he can bear, he snivels and tucks his tail between his legs, and complains that everyone is picking on him.  Just what you'd expect from someone who sees his own out-sized image appended to this page every-time he comes back to read and/or respond to comments.

A careful reading will show that he usually escalates the contention in these comments. The first disagreement drives his determination to assert his superior knowledge and values.

It's easier, of course, and more in keeping with progressive ideals, than responding to the factual challenges offered by readers.

More typically, his self-absorption is exceeded only by his monumental lack of self-awareness.  "Picking on" others is Eddie's stock in trade, and he usually does it with name-calling, insults, and other low blows that make his derision abundantly clear.

He's quick to question other's knowledge on subjects of which he speaks, and when it's demonstrated he's off base, he retreats into a “I never suggested I know......” buried tail.

As much as he brags on those 1200 “shares,” you'd think he'd say something about the two net up-votes. My gosh; the transgender item netted 15 to the plus!

So this reader suggests he go to his room and sooth himself by counting the 'shares' one by one.  He's convinced that each and every one is a standing O for his brilliance, insight, and compassionate humanity.  When in fact, his columns most often fill the role of the National Enquirer front cover for the Forecaster.