Deep Roots
For a few weeks now in these Old Country posts I've been trying to hammer home the fact that the old country never left my parents. Their attitudes and their world view were almost untouched by the US. Instead they tried to mold aspects of America they didn't understand to their will. It mostly worked because they were by nature very willful, persistent people. They, like my grandparents, would have never likely come to America had it not been for the war. The war transplanted them physically, but they stayed who they were. Until Hitler, they had been happy. Hitler was gone. Why change?
I can see my parents' future fairly clearly without the war. My mother would have stayed in Tomaszow for all of her days surrounded by family and friends. Though an excellent student, I doubt she would have pursued any career. It would have been an aberrant thing to do. An attractive, intelligent woman from a well to do home who possessed hardly any identifiable rebel streak, she would have married well and raised her own children in the quiet and peace of her home town. There would have been grandchildren to dote upon in her old age, probably living in homes just a few hundred meters from her own home. It would have been a good life, provincial but satisfying in its own way.
My father would have worked his trade in Warsaw, living the single life, chasing skirts. Then sometime around the age of 25 - the war delayed this to 30 in his actual life - he would have had the urge to settle down and raise a family. He would have lived a largely secular life by his father's standards. He would have still sent money back home. Maybe he and his father would have reconciled, but I have my doubts. He would have still possessed drive, ambition and brains. I have a notion that like in the US, he would have found a way to make something of himself. America isn't the only place where people can make money.
But of course, none of this happened. In September of 1939, both of their lives changed irrevocably. By luck, they survived and came here. It's telling, though, that neither of them possessed any desire to marry an American. I remember a foreign born friend of mine here who was looking to get married. There were exactly eight single men from her homeland in the town where she was living in the US. Over a period of a few months, she spent time with each one of them and eventually, picked one to marry. They're still married.
I understood what she was doing completely. If there had only been eight single male European Jews in Milwaukee, I don't know if my mother would have married one of them, but if none of them would have proved satisfactory she would have found a better match in Chicago. Ditto for my father. They had deep and unusual roots. They weren't about to enter into marriage with someone who didn't understand their childhood experiences and who didn't really understand how war can devastate your life. I felt about the same way when I was looking for girlfriends, too. What was the point of spending time with someone who didn't understand my mother tongue, and who undoubtedly would think my parents were crazy or worse? They weren't crazy. They were typical Jewish shtetl dwellers who happened to live in the US.
Growing up, there were two separate worlds. Other children of immigrants - Jewish or not - undoubtedly know this as well although the details are certainly different. Inside my house and inside the four square block neighborhood of shtetl dwellers around my synagogue, the rules for living came from the other side of the Atlantic ocean. Life was incredibly emotional, a crazy quilt of screaming, tears, stupid jokes, hugs, kisses, and silliness and often you experienced all of those elements in a single day.
Outside my house and outside that neighborhood, it was goyville. The intensity was down three notches. The volume was down eight. It was a relief to enter goyville, but it was also kind of boring and lifeless. I'd change my behavior when I entered goyville. I didn't have a choice. I needed to fit in. I'm sure that my parents thought they were changing their behavior as well to fit in. But they could only change so much. I noticed the difference sometimes. But I know that for typical Americans, the reaction to my parents was, "Who are these people?"
The ways of the Old Country would show up time and time again in the oddest of ways and times. My brother-in-law tragically died at a very young age, 31 if I remember correctly. My mother, of course, attended the funeral. I stood next to her and saw her eyes on the two brothers of my brother-in-law. I knew exactly what she was thinking. They were both tall, healthy, responsible, well raised and single. My brother-in-law had an infant daughter. She was looking at those two young men and putting two and two together. As we walked back to the car after the funeral, she said, "You know what. In Europe, one of the brothers would..." She didn't have to finish the sentence.
"It's not Europe, mom."
"What would be so bad?" The funny thing is that part of me thought that she was right.
The last house my mother built was on the deepest part of the curve of a semicircular road. She had developed the entire subdivision along that road and sold off all of the lots except for two. For the longest time, she held onto the two lots next her house. Again she didn't have to tell me why. There was one for each son. She'd have her grandchildren on each side of her just like she would have had in Tomaszow had Hitler not screwed things up.
I'd visit and of course would always notice those empty lots. I certainly wasn't going to move back and build a house on one of them, but I never told her that. It would have been a source of conflict. Why burst her bubble?
But one day I got a call at Duke from a national environmental engineering firm. It was a strange cold call from a principal of the firm. "Professor Rojstaczer," he said. "We're opening up a new office and need someone talented and energetic to lead it." He had pronounced my name not like I pronounce it, "Roy'-sta-chair," but like someone else I knew very well pronounced it, "Row-sta-cher." Every one in my family pronounced our last name differently, go figure. You can't tell any of us what to do.
I heard his pronunciation and I smiled. Then I heard the following line and I laughed out loud. "The office is in your home town of Milwaukee. Wouldn't you like to go back home, Professor Rojstaczer?" He had pronounced my last name exactly how my mother pronounced it.
"You know I'm from Milwaukee?"
"I've done my homework, yes."
"Who sent you? My mother?" I joked, and told him no I wasn't interested.
That weekend, I told my mother about the call and laughed about it. But she wasn't laughing at all. My mom got all excited and was disappointed that I had said no. Maybe I could call him back, she said. She used to tease me about how little Duke was paying me. "Even my plumbing contractor makes way more than you," she would remind me not infrequently.
She brought up my pay again during this conversation about my job offer. "They'd pay you probably triple what you're making now," she said. I knew that empty lot was waiting just for me, of course. I knew what she was thinking. Her granddaughter could be right next to her. She'd have what she should have had in Tomaszów. But in a lot of ways she had already made Milwaukee into Tomaszów. The things she didn't like about America, she did her best to ignore. My father did the same thing. In some ways, so do I. The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree, you know.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, February 25th, 2009
Here's the weekly round up of spins on about 50 jazz and AAA stations. Andrew Bird is still up there. I need to check out Shemekia Copeland's and Ernestine Anderson's new CDs. Morrissey is back and while I enjoyed The Smiths back in the day, I've moved on. That said, he's one of the few people with any sort of brain in pop music. The same can be said for David Byrne, another lyricist I also liked back in the day. Neko Case has a new CD as well. I always liked her fellow Corn Sister Carolyn Mark better. But Neko has the voice and the look and that always takes precedence in pop.
Daniel Menaker gave Neko a big write up in the NY Times mag last week or so. He was supposed to be working on a new novel, but I guess that hasn't worked out. Writing novels is hard to do I know and maybe he's just taking a break. He did a nice write up of Jerry Douglas in the New Yorker a while back, too. That one made me jealous. Menaker, after threatening to do so for years, has taken up playing country fiddle. A 60 year old man taking up the fiddle is a brave thing. I'm not talking about the adventure of musical discovery. I'm talking about the sounds of a new fiddle player and the ears of a spouse. That's a serious threat to any marriage. His wife must really love him.
1 M. Ward Hold Time AAM / Dauntless Promotion / Merge 2009
2 Benny Golson New Time, New 'Tet Concord 2009
3 Dr. Lonnie Smith Rise Up! Palmetto 2009
4 The Blue Note 7 Mosaic: A Celebration Of Blue Note Records The Blue Note Label 2009
5 Various Artists Dark Was The Night 4AD 2009
6 Tom Harrell Prana Dance Highnote 2009
7 Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock & Jack DeJohnette Yesterdays ECM 2009
8 Neko Case Middle Cyclone Anti / Epitaph 2009
9 Andrew Bird Noble Beast Fat Possum 2009
10 Michael Wolff Joe's Strut Wrong 2009
10 Ann Hampton Callaway At Last Telarc Jazz 2009
10 Shemekia Copeland Never Going Back Heads Up / Telarc 2009
13 The Clayton Brothers Brother To Brother ArtistShare 2008
14 Bruce Springsteen Working On A Dream Columbia 2009
15 James Moody & Hank Jones Our Delight IPO 2008
16 Ernestine Anderson A Song For You HighNote 2009
16 Jane Monheit The Lovers, The Dreamers And Me Concord 2009
18 Dan Auerbach Keep It Hid Nonesuch 2009
19 The Bird And The Bee Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future The Blue Note Label 2009
19 Joshua Redman Compass Nonesuch 2009
21 Eliane Elias Bossa Nova Stories Somethin' Else / Blue Note 2009
21 Gary Smulyan High Noon Reservoir 2008
21 Ben Harper & Relentless 7 White Lies For Dark Times Virgin 2009
21 Mike Clark Blueprints Of Jazz: Vol. 1 Talking House 2009
21 Todd Coolman Perfect Strangers Artist Share 2009
26 Claudio Roditi Brazilliance x4 Resonance 2008
26 Ruthie Foster The Truth According To Ruthie Foster Blue Corn 2009
28 The Bad Plus For All I Care Do The Math / Heads Up 2008
29 Clifton Anderson Decade Doxy / EmArcy 2008
29 The Derek Trucks Band Already Free Sony / Victor 2009
31 David Byrne & Brian Eno Everything That Happens Will Happen Today Todomundo 2008
31 Ryan Adams & The Cardinals Cardinology Lost Highway 2008
33 Bill Henderson Beautiful Memory: Bill Henderson Live At The Vic Ahuh 2009
33 The Bob Sneider & Joe Locke Film Noir Project Nocturne For Ava Origin 2009
33 Jeff 'Tain' Watts Watts Dark Key 2009
33 Lucinda Williams Little Honey Lost Highway 2008
33 Gomez A New Tide ATO 2009
33 Terrence Brewer Groovin' Wes Strong Brew 2009
39 U2 No Line On The Horizon Interscope 2009
39 The Pretenders Break Up The Concrete Shangri-La 2008
39 Morrissey Years Of Refusal Attack / Lost Highway 2009
Daniel Menaker gave Neko a big write up in the NY Times mag last week or so. He was supposed to be working on a new novel, but I guess that hasn't worked out. Writing novels is hard to do I know and maybe he's just taking a break. He did a nice write up of Jerry Douglas in the New Yorker a while back, too. That one made me jealous. Menaker, after threatening to do so for years, has taken up playing country fiddle. A 60 year old man taking up the fiddle is a brave thing. I'm not talking about the adventure of musical discovery. I'm talking about the sounds of a new fiddle player and the ears of a spouse. That's a serious threat to any marriage. His wife must really love him.
1 M. Ward Hold Time AAM / Dauntless Promotion / Merge 2009
2 Benny Golson New Time, New 'Tet Concord 2009
3 Dr. Lonnie Smith Rise Up! Palmetto 2009
4 The Blue Note 7 Mosaic: A Celebration Of Blue Note Records The Blue Note Label 2009
5 Various Artists Dark Was The Night 4AD 2009
6 Tom Harrell Prana Dance Highnote 2009
7 Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock & Jack DeJohnette Yesterdays ECM 2009
8 Neko Case Middle Cyclone Anti / Epitaph 2009
9 Andrew Bird Noble Beast Fat Possum 2009
10 Michael Wolff Joe's Strut Wrong 2009
10 Ann Hampton Callaway At Last Telarc Jazz 2009
10 Shemekia Copeland Never Going Back Heads Up / Telarc 2009
13 The Clayton Brothers Brother To Brother ArtistShare 2008
14 Bruce Springsteen Working On A Dream Columbia 2009
15 James Moody & Hank Jones Our Delight IPO 2008
16 Ernestine Anderson A Song For You HighNote 2009
16 Jane Monheit The Lovers, The Dreamers And Me Concord 2009
18 Dan Auerbach Keep It Hid Nonesuch 2009
19 The Bird And The Bee Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future The Blue Note Label 2009
19 Joshua Redman Compass Nonesuch 2009
21 Eliane Elias Bossa Nova Stories Somethin' Else / Blue Note 2009
21 Gary Smulyan High Noon Reservoir 2008
21 Ben Harper & Relentless 7 White Lies For Dark Times Virgin 2009
21 Mike Clark Blueprints Of Jazz: Vol. 1 Talking House 2009
21 Todd Coolman Perfect Strangers Artist Share 2009
26 Claudio Roditi Brazilliance x4 Resonance 2008
26 Ruthie Foster The Truth According To Ruthie Foster Blue Corn 2009
28 The Bad Plus For All I Care Do The Math / Heads Up 2008
29 Clifton Anderson Decade Doxy / EmArcy 2008
29 The Derek Trucks Band Already Free Sony / Victor 2009
31 David Byrne & Brian Eno Everything That Happens Will Happen Today Todomundo 2008
31 Ryan Adams & The Cardinals Cardinology Lost Highway 2008
33 Bill Henderson Beautiful Memory: Bill Henderson Live At The Vic Ahuh 2009
33 The Bob Sneider & Joe Locke Film Noir Project Nocturne For Ava Origin 2009
33 Jeff 'Tain' Watts Watts Dark Key 2009
33 Lucinda Williams Little Honey Lost Highway 2008
33 Gomez A New Tide ATO 2009
33 Terrence Brewer Groovin' Wes Strong Brew 2009
39 U2 No Line On The Horizon Interscope 2009
39 The Pretenders Break Up The Concrete Shangri-La 2008
39 Morrissey Years Of Refusal Attack / Lost Highway 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Grade Inflation Update Part 10: Everything You Need To Know in One State
This was published yesterday in the Raleigh News and Observer.
Point of View: Raleigh News & Observer, Published: Feb 23, 2009 06:46 PM Modified: Feb 24, 2009 05:39 AM
Heading to when A is average
BY STUART ROJSTACZER
STANFORD, Calif. - I collect data on college grades. It's a hobby of mine. Others collect cars, commemorative plates and whatnot. That's not my thing. I'd rather collect data. And given that I'm a retired college professor from Duke, it would make sense that I'd be interested in grading.
Over a million students total are represented in my database, which can be found at www.gradeinflation.com. The average GPA nationwide is now between 3.0 and 3.1. Grading is easy in America, and grades have been rising nationwide for over 20 years.
But you don't need to look at data from all over the country to know this. All you have to do is examine college grading in one state, North Carolina. I've collected extensive grading histories from six North Carolina schools.
Everything you need to know about grading in colleges across America can be found in those six schools, one private and elite, Duke; one private and modestly selective, Elon; and four public, including an engineering school, N.C. State University, and a flagship liberal arts school, UNC-Chapel Hill.
First off, it's worth noting that, at all six schools, grades keep going up to the tune of 0.1 to 0.3 change in GPA per decade. Just like everywhere else in the country, schools in North Carolina are grading easier than ever.
But it's also interesting to look at the actual GPAs of these schools. At the top of the heap grade-wise, you have Duke, which has for at least 40 years graded about 0.2 higher than UNC-Chapel Hill. The gap widens and narrows slightly over those 40 years, but it's persistent. Right now it's narrowing and Duke's GPA is 3.4 while UNC's is in comparison a meek 3.2. Those are typical numbers for elite schools and flagship state schools, respectively, across the country.
Below UNC-Chapel Hill, historically you have North Carolina schools with harsher grading. N.C. State tends to draw the techie/engineering types and, like at most tech schools, GPAs are low.
N.C. State's grading, about an average 2.9 GPA, is actually very similar to other state tech schools like Purdue and Georgia Tech. Nerds apparently don't cry when they get B's.
Then you have satellite schools and nonselective private schools with less competitive students and lower grades historically as well. That mirrors the nation. Less competitive schools historically have had lower GPAs.
But something is changing in these grading patterns. Two of these historically low grading schools are showing rapid increases in grades, UNC-Asheville and Elon University. They are approaching the average GPA at Chapel Hill, even though their students, on average, aren't as competitive.
What's happening at these schools is similar to what is happening across the country. Liberal arts colleges like Elon have seen dramatic rises in GPAs over the last 20 years. Then there are state schools, like UNC-Asheville, that were once sleepy little regional things in attractive settings that suddenly became attractive to out-of-staters. These, too, can be expected to have significant rises in GPA, far faster than the national average.
Administrators will tell you that grades are rising for myriad reasons that reflect well on their institutions. Students are getting better. Teachers are getting better. Methods of teaching are better.
That may all be true at some colleges, but that's not the real driver. It never has been what has driven rising grades. Grade inflation leads to worse education, but it does make for happier students with brighter prospects for job and post-graduate school placement. That's why we inflate grades. It's true in North Carolina. It's true everywhere.
In a nutshell, grading in North Carolina and the rest of the colleges in America has turned into a kind of horse race. Everyone is racing to get to the point where the average student is an A student. In about 30 years, if current trends hold, Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Asheville and Elon will all get there. The average GPA at all of those places will be between 3.6 and 4.0. The same can be said for hundreds of colleges and universities -- both prominent and obscure -across the country.
What will it mean if in 2040, A is average in many of America's colleges? It certainly means that grades will be meaningless. It also undoubtedly means that we will have severely discounted the value of higher education. Grade inflation represents the greatest collective failure in education in America over the last 20 years.
Stuart Rojstaczer is a former professor of geophysics from Duke University. He is the author of a book, "Gone for Good: Tales of University Life After the Golden Age," and many articles on higher education and grading. Christopher Healy was instrumental in finding data for this article.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
The Student View of College Today
I know a college freshman who went to a decent, but not particularly rigorous suburban public high school. He did well in high school, well enough to get accepted at his flagship state school and a nearby top-notch private university. He’s a nice kid. He isn’t an intellectual, but if we limited college to intellectuals only, we’d have probably one tenth as many students as we have today. He is driven by a desire to do well.
He chose the state school over the private one partly because of the cost and partly because he liked the sports teams of the state school better. As his mom said in all seriousness, “When you choose a college, you’re choosing a sports team for life.” I’ll buy that argument. I think it’s ridiculous that college sports are so important, but I understand that they are important to many.
At the end of his first semester, my sweetie asked him how it was going. He said he was doing well in school. That’s no surprise. But then he said something most college students never admit to an adult. “I have so much time on my hands. This is way easier than high school.”
Welcome to college life today. High school was the hard part. College in comparison is a breeze. Somehow, I think it would be better if it were the other way around.
In print, it’s hard to find college students that admit that they aren’t working very hard. But every once in a while, it leaks out. Here are two recent descriptions of what college life is like. One comes from a comment to an Atlantic Magazine article about drinking in America by someone named Jenny:
“Re: College Kids Getting Drunk
My theory is that it has nothing to do with the legal drinking age or legal accessibility to alcohol. It has everything to do with what a waste of time college is....
Kids get drunk at college because:
1) Getting drunk is fun.
2) There is very little cost to getting drunk since grade inflation makes it easy to get good enough grades and most classes teach very little that is worthwhile.
If college administrators want kids to stop drinking, they can start making education relevant to the real world. Right now, the primary benefit of college is the piece of paper at the end. No one cares about 95% of the research done at universities. And 95% of what is taught is of no interest to the corporations recruiting. Most students realize very quickly that they aren't learning skills or knowledge that are of interest to anyone besides their professor. So they put in the bare minimum, and drink.”
Jenny’s description – bored college students who have no interest in learning, drinking away their four years – isn’t very pleasant, but based on my experiences teaching, it’s dead on accurate for about one third to one half of the undergraduates I taught. Jenny, whomever she may be, actually sounds like one of the nicer slackers I had to deal with. A good one quarter of my classes typically consisted of spoiled children – some of whom were well connected, most not – with no work ethic whatsoever. The expectation was that I had to suck it up, be polite and make sure they got through college with a B average or better.
I’ll get back to Jenny’s view of college in a bit. But let’s go onto a second view of college from Tyler Ibbotson-Sindelar in the Yale Daily News:
“Why do students at Yale focus so much time and effort on extracurriculars while often arriving unprepared for class? That’s just the Yale culture, or so I often hear. After all, when you get here, you’re immediately bombarded by the freshman bazaar. There are so many exciting activities, and your roommate just signed up for three a cappella groups, two club sports and a theater production, so you do, too….
College shouldn’t just be about learning to write papers. It should also teach students how to work with others; develop skills, such as playing instruments or sports; do research in labs or libraries; lead student groups and help the community. College is the launching ground for students to become adults. As such, it should encourage us to pursue activities that will enable us to function as adults. That means not just accumulating knowledge but integrating a life of the mind into real experience.”
Tyler admits students at Yale don’t study much, but he thinks that’s a good thing. It’s a curious argument. A student has about 100 to 110 waking hours in the week. Right now your typical student spends about 25 or so of those hours – the equivalent of a part time job – engaged in school. As Tyler notes, that means that students are unprepared when they get to class. This is true at Yale. This certainly was true at Duke where I taught and where students actually study about three hours less than the national average of 14 hours. It’s true at the flagship state school that my freshman acquaintance attends.
Let’s say instead of having college be a part time job where students barely make an effort, that we turn it into a full time job where they study and are actually prepared for class. Let’s add 10 more hours of study time to their week. They'd be in class or studying about 35 hours a week, which is about the amount of hours students were studying or attending class before the Vietnam era. That still leaves them with 65-75 hours to do whatever fun things they want to do besides school (which should be fun in its own way). I wouldn’t call this an onerous job in the least.
The bottom line is that on average, students are doing less than they should. Classes drag because the majority of students are unprepared. Higher education right now is a rather wan and pathetic enterprise. It’s so pathetic that it’s easier than suburban high school.
I want to get back to Jenny’s critique of college. I happen to think it has some merit. It says college is a waste of time because almost all of the information learned is irrelevant. I think that’s a prevalent attitude in college. Students just want the information they need for today. They essentially want vocational training.
I honestly don’t blame students for this attitude. I blame the academy. We should be showing these students that in higher education you aren’t learning information per se, you’re learning ways of problem solving and ways to analyze information that will be useful in any endeavor. You examine the work of great minds past and present because their understanding of the world helps enrich your life.
But how can you show this when class expectations are so low? Instead of classes filled with intellectual inquiry, professors are compelled to just go through the motions. Indeed under these low energy conditions with unprepared students and professors acquiescing to the lack of commitment on the part of students, Jenny is right. The information conveyed is irrelevant 95 percent of the time.
Low standards mean not only poorly educated students. They also are a statement that what the academy is teaching isn’t particularly useful. I think it would be a worthwhile objective to get Jenny and Tyler on board to the idea that what happens in the classroom has meaning and value, more value than anything else going on in college. But to do that the academy has to raise the bar.
I left my professor job partly because undergraduate education today is pathetic, but on my optimistic days, I think that it’s only a matter of time before the academy turns things around. We can’t go much lower than we are today. Sooner or later the academy will wake up and start teaching again. Workloads will go back up. Students will be expected to think hard again. An A will no longer be the most common grade. Classes won’t be so filled with deadwood because some that are uninspired and do not work will flunk out. Both the possibility of rewards for truly outstanding achievement and punishment for shoddy work need to be present just like they are in the workplace.
If we can manage to do that – give higher education meaning again - students like Jenny might start to understand that intellectual inquiry actually does have value. A student like Tyler might be flat out pissed when his fellow students come to class unprepared and essentially waste his and his professor’s time during their three hours a week together. And maybe, just maybe future freshmen will not be complaining that they have too much free time on their hands.
He chose the state school over the private one partly because of the cost and partly because he liked the sports teams of the state school better. As his mom said in all seriousness, “When you choose a college, you’re choosing a sports team for life.” I’ll buy that argument. I think it’s ridiculous that college sports are so important, but I understand that they are important to many.
At the end of his first semester, my sweetie asked him how it was going. He said he was doing well in school. That’s no surprise. But then he said something most college students never admit to an adult. “I have so much time on my hands. This is way easier than high school.”
Welcome to college life today. High school was the hard part. College in comparison is a breeze. Somehow, I think it would be better if it were the other way around.
In print, it’s hard to find college students that admit that they aren’t working very hard. But every once in a while, it leaks out. Here are two recent descriptions of what college life is like. One comes from a comment to an Atlantic Magazine article about drinking in America by someone named Jenny:
“Re: College Kids Getting Drunk
My theory is that it has nothing to do with the legal drinking age or legal accessibility to alcohol. It has everything to do with what a waste of time college is....
Kids get drunk at college because:
1) Getting drunk is fun.
2) There is very little cost to getting drunk since grade inflation makes it easy to get good enough grades and most classes teach very little that is worthwhile.
If college administrators want kids to stop drinking, they can start making education relevant to the real world. Right now, the primary benefit of college is the piece of paper at the end. No one cares about 95% of the research done at universities. And 95% of what is taught is of no interest to the corporations recruiting. Most students realize very quickly that they aren't learning skills or knowledge that are of interest to anyone besides their professor. So they put in the bare minimum, and drink.”
Jenny’s description – bored college students who have no interest in learning, drinking away their four years – isn’t very pleasant, but based on my experiences teaching, it’s dead on accurate for about one third to one half of the undergraduates I taught. Jenny, whomever she may be, actually sounds like one of the nicer slackers I had to deal with. A good one quarter of my classes typically consisted of spoiled children – some of whom were well connected, most not – with no work ethic whatsoever. The expectation was that I had to suck it up, be polite and make sure they got through college with a B average or better.
I’ll get back to Jenny’s view of college in a bit. But let’s go onto a second view of college from Tyler Ibbotson-Sindelar in the Yale Daily News:
“Why do students at Yale focus so much time and effort on extracurriculars while often arriving unprepared for class? That’s just the Yale culture, or so I often hear. After all, when you get here, you’re immediately bombarded by the freshman bazaar. There are so many exciting activities, and your roommate just signed up for three a cappella groups, two club sports and a theater production, so you do, too….
College shouldn’t just be about learning to write papers. It should also teach students how to work with others; develop skills, such as playing instruments or sports; do research in labs or libraries; lead student groups and help the community. College is the launching ground for students to become adults. As such, it should encourage us to pursue activities that will enable us to function as adults. That means not just accumulating knowledge but integrating a life of the mind into real experience.”
Tyler admits students at Yale don’t study much, but he thinks that’s a good thing. It’s a curious argument. A student has about 100 to 110 waking hours in the week. Right now your typical student spends about 25 or so of those hours – the equivalent of a part time job – engaged in school. As Tyler notes, that means that students are unprepared when they get to class. This is true at Yale. This certainly was true at Duke where I taught and where students actually study about three hours less than the national average of 14 hours. It’s true at the flagship state school that my freshman acquaintance attends.
Let’s say instead of having college be a part time job where students barely make an effort, that we turn it into a full time job where they study and are actually prepared for class. Let’s add 10 more hours of study time to their week. They'd be in class or studying about 35 hours a week, which is about the amount of hours students were studying or attending class before the Vietnam era. That still leaves them with 65-75 hours to do whatever fun things they want to do besides school (which should be fun in its own way). I wouldn’t call this an onerous job in the least.
The bottom line is that on average, students are doing less than they should. Classes drag because the majority of students are unprepared. Higher education right now is a rather wan and pathetic enterprise. It’s so pathetic that it’s easier than suburban high school.
I want to get back to Jenny’s critique of college. I happen to think it has some merit. It says college is a waste of time because almost all of the information learned is irrelevant. I think that’s a prevalent attitude in college. Students just want the information they need for today. They essentially want vocational training.
I honestly don’t blame students for this attitude. I blame the academy. We should be showing these students that in higher education you aren’t learning information per se, you’re learning ways of problem solving and ways to analyze information that will be useful in any endeavor. You examine the work of great minds past and present because their understanding of the world helps enrich your life.
But how can you show this when class expectations are so low? Instead of classes filled with intellectual inquiry, professors are compelled to just go through the motions. Indeed under these low energy conditions with unprepared students and professors acquiescing to the lack of commitment on the part of students, Jenny is right. The information conveyed is irrelevant 95 percent of the time.
Low standards mean not only poorly educated students. They also are a statement that what the academy is teaching isn’t particularly useful. I think it would be a worthwhile objective to get Jenny and Tyler on board to the idea that what happens in the classroom has meaning and value, more value than anything else going on in college. But to do that the academy has to raise the bar.
I left my professor job partly because undergraduate education today is pathetic, but on my optimistic days, I think that it’s only a matter of time before the academy turns things around. We can’t go much lower than we are today. Sooner or later the academy will wake up and start teaching again. Workloads will go back up. Students will be expected to think hard again. An A will no longer be the most common grade. Classes won’t be so filled with deadwood because some that are uninspired and do not work will flunk out. Both the possibility of rewards for truly outstanding achievement and punishment for shoddy work need to be present just like they are in the workplace.
If we can manage to do that – give higher education meaning again - students like Jenny might start to understand that intellectual inquiry actually does have value. A student like Tyler might be flat out pissed when his fellow students come to class unprepared and essentially waste his and his professor’s time during their three hours a week together. And maybe, just maybe future freshmen will not be complaining that they have too much free time on their hands.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 43
Jerusalem of Gold
When my mother was 17 living in Munich, she protested with thousands of others in front of the British embassy to allow Jews to enter Palestine freely. The situation in Europe was untenable. There were hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors who had nowhere to go. Most, like my parents, were stuck in refugee camps, mostly consisting of depressing barracks, with no job prospects and no future. Resentment in the community of survivors was turning to anger. Demonstrations like this were not uncommon.
That said, my grandfather was furious to see my mother at these demonstrations. Sure, he was the one smuggling arms to the Haganah. But he was a man and that was man's work. It was clear to him that his wife would never allow his family to go to Palestine despite the fact that two of her sisters (and his first cousins) had already gone illegally and that his own brother would soon follow. He didn't want anything to jeopardize the possibility that they could get to America and that included the prospect of his daughter being arrested at a protest.
This conflict of my grandfather - on the one hand doing whatever he could to help Israel and on the other, desiring some restraint - to me is emblematic of the messy but strong emotional bond American survivors felt toward Israel. They didn't want to live there. It was simply too hard and they'd had enough of a hard life, already. They admired those - including their relatives - who chose to live in Israel, but there was also an antipathy, a vague feeling that those that made that choice were foolish dreamers. That antipathy was also matched by their Israeli relatives who were not shy to express the opinion that these Americans, despite all their declarations of being ardent Zionists, were believers on paper only.
My grandfather took only three vacations from work during his 43 years in America. All of them were trips to Israel to see family. My grandmother - who had four surviving sisters that I could recognize instantly not by their looks but their characteristic walk - also went to Israel once on her own. The Israeli family would badly splinter over the years. By the time I visited in 1973, going to one relative meant that I had irrevocably insulted another. They were stereotypical Polish Jews, always so sensitive to being slighted, what can I say?
Both my parents and my grandparents sent money regularly to their Israeli relatives. I don't think it was much. But I do know it helped out a good deal. Life in Israel was indeed very hard in the 1950s and 1960s. My grandfather's brother - who looked like a twin - tried to open a variety of businesses. He was a kind, genial man who did not possess the business sense of my grandfather. He had a small factory that made nails. That didn't work out. He opened a dry cleaner shop. That effort more or less paid the rent but in the 1960s, the Israelis got environmentally conscious and shut him down.
The correspondence between our Israeli relatives and us was mostly by letter in Yiddish. I think I still have a few of those letters. They were once every couple years kind of things talking about how the children were doing and how business was bad. There was no sugar coating like you tend to find in letters written by Americans. Ask an American, "How are you doing?" The answer is always some silly superficial "fine" or "good" or "great." If you asked my Israeli relatives or any of my parents survivor friends how they were doing, you'd get a laundry list of complaints mixed with a little bit of good news to make it all palatable.*
Sometimes there would be phone conversations. This was an funny thing because over time, my parents increasingly spoke Yinglish, a mix of English and Yiddish, and their relatives spoke Yebrew, a mix of English and Hebrew. When my mother talked, I'd have to listen on a separate line and translate for both.
Israel was always on my parents' minds as it was with all of the American survivors. It came up in conversation in synagogue again and again. This was especially true during the High Holidays.
Every Yom Kippur, an Israeli representative would come to our synagogue right before Yizkor - a prayer for lost love ones that no survivor would ever be caught not reciting every year - and give a speech soliciting for Israeli bonds. These speeches and what transpired after were always emotional affairs. There would be tears shed during the speech. Then like at an auction house, these refugees would raise their hands one by one and make declarations of what they would give that year. Nods of approval would be made by fellow synagogue members if the amount was considered to be generous relative to the income level of the bond buyer (and they all knew or thought they knew what each other made). Alternatively, they would shake their heads and would mumble or make shushing noises if someone was deemed a cheapskate.
Someone on the bimah kept a tally of the accumulating purchases. The synagogue president would occasionally get a whisper in his ear as to how much the synagogue had already pledged. He would shake his head in disapproval upon hearing the number and exhort his members for more. There was always a point of resistance, a lull in the donations. It would inevitably be accompanied by a stern lecture from the synagogue president about the stinginess of the members and the threat, "I swear to you my friends, that there will be no Yizkor until we raise more. I swear to you that if we cannot raise more, we will not have Yizkor at all this year."
The crowd seemed to never get jaded by these annual threats. Somehow, they did the trick year after year. Declarations of donations would resume. The magic threshold number of dollars accumulated, never stated in advance, would finally be whispered into the president's ear and all of the tension would end. The president would be beaming. This synagogue, he would declare, had done it again, raised more money than any other in the city. A sense of satisfaction and pride would fill the synagogue. That the other synagogues were filled with lazy, stingy American-born Jews far wealthier than they were didn't have to be said.
One Rosh Hashanah our synagogue's rabbi got up and gave a sermon in Yiddish like he always did. I was about seven at the time. Usually, I spent little time praying at that age and it wasn't expected that I would do so. But for some reason I was inside during this sermon. The old man got up and said what many in Orthodox Jewry believed at the time and some still do. Israel was not the chosen land. It was an impostor state full of sin. We cannot will ourselves back to the promised land by politics, he said. If we wanted to return, we had to do so through our deeds. Then a promised land would truly await us. We weren't ready yet. We weren't even close to being righteous enough for the return of the Messiah.
I was too young to understand all of what was said. All I knew was that the rabbi had caused the members of the synagogue to turn against him instantly. He was their leader respected for his learning, his kind heart during family tragedies, and his ability to help the community with their squabbles. But this speech was not acceptable. I could see the anger on my father's face and all of the synagogue members as the rabbi talked.
The rabbi finished and resumed prayers. The anger and resentment for this speech was an undercurrent for the rest of the day. A few days later the rabbi didn't exactly apologize, but word got around that he had decided that he would never make a "political speech" again. This message was met with cautious approval by my father and his friends. "Rabbis should stay away from politics," my father said. "They don't know what the hell they're talking about."
There's a photo of my father about to pray in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. He's putting on his kipah. The wind is blowing and he's making sure it stays on. I've put it at the top of this post. He's in his mid-fifties, which would put the date at about 1976. It was the last time he visited Israel in any semblance of physical or mental health.
Many Jews have photos like this of their relatives praying. Some Jews no doubt have expressions on their faces like my father. But I know that few possessed my father's intensity. My father isn't just about to pray in that picture. I know him. I can see that mix of anger and pride. He's making a claim on this place. He's been recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and already his features are starting to show that frozen look. But rightly or wrongly, I feel I know what he's thinking. Here I am in the city of gold. This is my place. This is my family's home.
My father had no desire to live in Israel. But in fact, it was his home more than any other place on this planet. So it was with most, if not all, of the refugees I grew up around.
*A few years ago I was in Nashville in a hotel lobby bathroom trying to get one of those funny optical detecting faucets to work. I noticed someone on my right and said, "Can you figure out how to make these things go?" "Just swish your hand," he said. "I already tried that," I said. I looked up to see who I was talking to. It turned out that it was the songwriter John Prine. "Hey, John, how are you doing?" I asked. I then heard a litany of complaints about his health. I thought, damn, now I know why he and Steve Goodman were best friends. John Prine, Scotch-Irish hick that he was, could fit right into the Polish Jewish crowd no problem.
When my mother was 17 living in Munich, she protested with thousands of others in front of the British embassy to allow Jews to enter Palestine freely. The situation in Europe was untenable. There were hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors who had nowhere to go. Most, like my parents, were stuck in refugee camps, mostly consisting of depressing barracks, with no job prospects and no future. Resentment in the community of survivors was turning to anger. Demonstrations like this were not uncommon. That said, my grandfather was furious to see my mother at these demonstrations. Sure, he was the one smuggling arms to the Haganah. But he was a man and that was man's work. It was clear to him that his wife would never allow his family to go to Palestine despite the fact that two of her sisters (and his first cousins) had already gone illegally and that his own brother would soon follow. He didn't want anything to jeopardize the possibility that they could get to America and that included the prospect of his daughter being arrested at a protest.
This conflict of my grandfather - on the one hand doing whatever he could to help Israel and on the other, desiring some restraint - to me is emblematic of the messy but strong emotional bond American survivors felt toward Israel. They didn't want to live there. It was simply too hard and they'd had enough of a hard life, already. They admired those - including their relatives - who chose to live in Israel, but there was also an antipathy, a vague feeling that those that made that choice were foolish dreamers. That antipathy was also matched by their Israeli relatives who were not shy to express the opinion that these Americans, despite all their declarations of being ardent Zionists, were believers on paper only.
My grandfather took only three vacations from work during his 43 years in America. All of them were trips to Israel to see family. My grandmother - who had four surviving sisters that I could recognize instantly not by their looks but their characteristic walk - also went to Israel once on her own. The Israeli family would badly splinter over the years. By the time I visited in 1973, going to one relative meant that I had irrevocably insulted another. They were stereotypical Polish Jews, always so sensitive to being slighted, what can I say?
Both my parents and my grandparents sent money regularly to their Israeli relatives. I don't think it was much. But I do know it helped out a good deal. Life in Israel was indeed very hard in the 1950s and 1960s. My grandfather's brother - who looked like a twin - tried to open a variety of businesses. He was a kind, genial man who did not possess the business sense of my grandfather. He had a small factory that made nails. That didn't work out. He opened a dry cleaner shop. That effort more or less paid the rent but in the 1960s, the Israelis got environmentally conscious and shut him down.
The correspondence between our Israeli relatives and us was mostly by letter in Yiddish. I think I still have a few of those letters. They were once every couple years kind of things talking about how the children were doing and how business was bad. There was no sugar coating like you tend to find in letters written by Americans. Ask an American, "How are you doing?" The answer is always some silly superficial "fine" or "good" or "great." If you asked my Israeli relatives or any of my parents survivor friends how they were doing, you'd get a laundry list of complaints mixed with a little bit of good news to make it all palatable.*
Sometimes there would be phone conversations. This was an funny thing because over time, my parents increasingly spoke Yinglish, a mix of English and Yiddish, and their relatives spoke Yebrew, a mix of English and Hebrew. When my mother talked, I'd have to listen on a separate line and translate for both.
Israel was always on my parents' minds as it was with all of the American survivors. It came up in conversation in synagogue again and again. This was especially true during the High Holidays.
Every Yom Kippur, an Israeli representative would come to our synagogue right before Yizkor - a prayer for lost love ones that no survivor would ever be caught not reciting every year - and give a speech soliciting for Israeli bonds. These speeches and what transpired after were always emotional affairs. There would be tears shed during the speech. Then like at an auction house, these refugees would raise their hands one by one and make declarations of what they would give that year. Nods of approval would be made by fellow synagogue members if the amount was considered to be generous relative to the income level of the bond buyer (and they all knew or thought they knew what each other made). Alternatively, they would shake their heads and would mumble or make shushing noises if someone was deemed a cheapskate.
Someone on the bimah kept a tally of the accumulating purchases. The synagogue president would occasionally get a whisper in his ear as to how much the synagogue had already pledged. He would shake his head in disapproval upon hearing the number and exhort his members for more. There was always a point of resistance, a lull in the donations. It would inevitably be accompanied by a stern lecture from the synagogue president about the stinginess of the members and the threat, "I swear to you my friends, that there will be no Yizkor until we raise more. I swear to you that if we cannot raise more, we will not have Yizkor at all this year."
The crowd seemed to never get jaded by these annual threats. Somehow, they did the trick year after year. Declarations of donations would resume. The magic threshold number of dollars accumulated, never stated in advance, would finally be whispered into the president's ear and all of the tension would end. The president would be beaming. This synagogue, he would declare, had done it again, raised more money than any other in the city. A sense of satisfaction and pride would fill the synagogue. That the other synagogues were filled with lazy, stingy American-born Jews far wealthier than they were didn't have to be said.
One Rosh Hashanah our synagogue's rabbi got up and gave a sermon in Yiddish like he always did. I was about seven at the time. Usually, I spent little time praying at that age and it wasn't expected that I would do so. But for some reason I was inside during this sermon. The old man got up and said what many in Orthodox Jewry believed at the time and some still do. Israel was not the chosen land. It was an impostor state full of sin. We cannot will ourselves back to the promised land by politics, he said. If we wanted to return, we had to do so through our deeds. Then a promised land would truly await us. We weren't ready yet. We weren't even close to being righteous enough for the return of the Messiah.
I was too young to understand all of what was said. All I knew was that the rabbi had caused the members of the synagogue to turn against him instantly. He was their leader respected for his learning, his kind heart during family tragedies, and his ability to help the community with their squabbles. But this speech was not acceptable. I could see the anger on my father's face and all of the synagogue members as the rabbi talked.
The rabbi finished and resumed prayers. The anger and resentment for this speech was an undercurrent for the rest of the day. A few days later the rabbi didn't exactly apologize, but word got around that he had decided that he would never make a "political speech" again. This message was met with cautious approval by my father and his friends. "Rabbis should stay away from politics," my father said. "They don't know what the hell they're talking about."
There's a photo of my father about to pray in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. He's putting on his kipah. The wind is blowing and he's making sure it stays on. I've put it at the top of this post. He's in his mid-fifties, which would put the date at about 1976. It was the last time he visited Israel in any semblance of physical or mental health.
Many Jews have photos like this of their relatives praying. Some Jews no doubt have expressions on their faces like my father. But I know that few possessed my father's intensity. My father isn't just about to pray in that picture. I know him. I can see that mix of anger and pride. He's making a claim on this place. He's been recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and already his features are starting to show that frozen look. But rightly or wrongly, I feel I know what he's thinking. Here I am in the city of gold. This is my place. This is my family's home.
My father had no desire to live in Israel. But in fact, it was his home more than any other place on this planet. So it was with most, if not all, of the refugees I grew up around.
*A few years ago I was in Nashville in a hotel lobby bathroom trying to get one of those funny optical detecting faucets to work. I noticed someone on my right and said, "Can you figure out how to make these things go?" "Just swish your hand," he said. "I already tried that," I said. I looked up to see who I was talking to. It turned out that it was the songwriter John Prine. "Hey, John, how are you doing?" I asked. I then heard a litany of complaints about his health. I thought, damn, now I know why he and Steve Goodman were best friends. John Prine, Scotch-Irish hick that he was, could fit right into the Polish Jewish crowd no problem.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, February 18th, 2009
Here's what about 50 AAA and Jazz stations were playing this week. I'd be hard pressed to recommend anything on this list to someone with a lot of music already on their iPod that I haven't already recommended. But there are couple of new things here that I still have yet to peruse and hope springs eternal. Otherwise there's always Chopin.
1 M. Ward Hold Time AAM / Dauntless Promotion / Merge 2009
2 The Blue Note 7 Mosaic: A Celebration Of Blue Note Records The Blue Note Label 2009
3 Ann Hampton Callaway At Last Telarc Jazz 2009
3 Benny Golson New Time, New 'Tet Concord 2009
5 Rudresh Mahanthappa's Indo-Pak Coalition Apti Innova 2009
6 Michael Wolff Joe's Strut Wrong 2009
7 Dr. Lonnie Smith Rise Up! Palmetto 2009
8 Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock & Jack DeJohnette Yesterdays ECM 2009
9 The Clayton Brothers Brother To Brother ArtistShare 2008
10 Bruce Springsteen Working On A Dream Columbia 2009
11 The Derek Trucks Band Already Free Sony / Victor 2009
11 Dan Auerbach Keep It Hid Nonesuch 2009
13 Eliane Elias Bossa Nova Stories Somethin' Else / Blue Note 2009
14 Broken Social Scene You Forgot It In People Arts & Crafts 2003
14 Tom Harrell Prana Dance Highnote 2009
14 Claudio Roditi Brazilliance x4 Resonance 2008
14 Kings Of Leon Only By The Night RCA 2008
14 Andrew Bird Noble Beast Fat Possum 2009
19 Joshua Redman Compass Nonesuch 2009
20 Gary Smulyan High Noon Reservoir 2008
20 James Moody & Hank Jones Our Delight IPO 2008
20 Susan Tedeschi Back To The River VMG 2008
21 The Revelations Deep Soul Decision / Traffic 2008
21 Various Artists Dark Was The Night 4AD 2009
21 The Bird And The Bee Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future The Blue Note Label 2009
21 Ruthie Foster The Truth According To Ruthie Foster Blue Corn 2009
27 David Byrne & Brian Eno Everything That Happens Will Happen Today Todomundo 2008
28 Madeleine Peyroux Bare Bones Rounder 2009
28 Ravi Coltrane Blending Times Savoy Jazz 2009
28 Jane Monheit The Lovers, The Dreamers And Me Concord 2009
28 Jenny Lewis Acid Tongue Warner Bros. 2008
28 The Bad Plus For All I Care Do The Math / Heads Up 2008
28 John Stetch Tv Trio Brux 2008
28 The Cure Wish Elektra 1992
35 Clifton Anderson Decade Doxy / EmArcy 2008
35 Marco Benevento Me Not Me The Royal Potato Family 2009
37 Tony DeSare Radio Show Telarc Jazz 2009
37 The BPA I Think We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat Southern Fried 2009
39 Bill Henderson Beautiful Memory: Bill Henderson Live At The Vic Ahuh 2009
39 Mike Clark Blueprints Of Jazz: Vol. 1 Talking House 2009
39 The Pretenders Break Up The Concrete Shangri-La 2008
39 Heartless Bastards The Mountain Fat Possum 2009
1 M. Ward Hold Time AAM / Dauntless Promotion / Merge 2009
2 The Blue Note 7 Mosaic: A Celebration Of Blue Note Records The Blue Note Label 2009
3 Ann Hampton Callaway At Last Telarc Jazz 2009
3 Benny Golson New Time, New 'Tet Concord 2009
5 Rudresh Mahanthappa's Indo-Pak Coalition Apti Innova 2009
6 Michael Wolff Joe's Strut Wrong 2009
7 Dr. Lonnie Smith Rise Up! Palmetto 2009
8 Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock & Jack DeJohnette Yesterdays ECM 2009
9 The Clayton Brothers Brother To Brother ArtistShare 2008
10 Bruce Springsteen Working On A Dream Columbia 2009
11 The Derek Trucks Band Already Free Sony / Victor 2009
11 Dan Auerbach Keep It Hid Nonesuch 2009
13 Eliane Elias Bossa Nova Stories Somethin' Else / Blue Note 2009
14 Broken Social Scene You Forgot It In People Arts & Crafts 2003
14 Tom Harrell Prana Dance Highnote 2009
14 Claudio Roditi Brazilliance x4 Resonance 2008
14 Kings Of Leon Only By The Night RCA 2008
14 Andrew Bird Noble Beast Fat Possum 2009
19 Joshua Redman Compass Nonesuch 2009
20 Gary Smulyan High Noon Reservoir 2008
20 James Moody & Hank Jones Our Delight IPO 2008
20 Susan Tedeschi Back To The River VMG 2008
21 The Revelations Deep Soul Decision / Traffic 2008
21 Various Artists Dark Was The Night 4AD 2009
21 The Bird And The Bee Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future The Blue Note Label 2009
21 Ruthie Foster The Truth According To Ruthie Foster Blue Corn 2009
27 David Byrne & Brian Eno Everything That Happens Will Happen Today Todomundo 2008
28 Madeleine Peyroux Bare Bones Rounder 2009
28 Ravi Coltrane Blending Times Savoy Jazz 2009
28 Jane Monheit The Lovers, The Dreamers And Me Concord 2009
28 Jenny Lewis Acid Tongue Warner Bros. 2008
28 The Bad Plus For All I Care Do The Math / Heads Up 2008
28 John Stetch Tv Trio Brux 2008
28 The Cure Wish Elektra 1992
35 Clifton Anderson Decade Doxy / EmArcy 2008
35 Marco Benevento Me Not Me The Royal Potato Family 2009
37 Tony DeSare Radio Show Telarc Jazz 2009
37 The BPA I Think We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat Southern Fried 2009
39 Bill Henderson Beautiful Memory: Bill Henderson Live At The Vic Ahuh 2009
39 Mike Clark Blueprints Of Jazz: Vol. 1 Talking House 2009
39 The Pretenders Break Up The Concrete Shangri-La 2008
39 Heartless Bastards The Mountain Fat Possum 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Grade Inflation Update Part 9: Recent Trends At 52 Schools
I'm working on my paper on historical trends in grading over the last 80 years. Its focus is less on grade inflation - that's too obvious a topic for an interesting research paper - and more on what trends in grading mean for a meritocracy. I doubt that I'll include the figures below in my paper, but they will be placed on gradeinflation.com in some form at the end of the month.
I have good data on changes in grades from over 50 schools over the last 20 years. That's a dramatic improvement in quantity over my last major update of gradeinflation.com in 2003. Back then I focused simply on the magnitude of grade changes from school to school. But that approach leaves out an important piece of information. What are average GPAs today? The two figures below try to provide a better picture of where each school stands in terms of its grading.
The first graph shows grade changes over a 15 year time interval (most over the interval 1991-2006; a few over the interval 1990-2005) for public schools. You can click on the graph for better detail. This is the kind of graph that makes schools reluctant to give me data because I name names. But in my opinion, it is silly for a school to hide data like this for any reason. It runs counter to any idea of what it means to be part of a community of scholars. I'm doing research on grading trends. Why wouldn't a university or college want to be open to research? If they are embarrassed about their rising grades, then they should try to fix their problem not hide it. This is all so obvious that I wonder why I just wrote the last few sentences.
Anyway, there have been many cooperative schools and I won't name the stinkers because I'm hoping that one day they'll actually come around to making their data public. The average GPA change for public schools over this recent 15 year interval is 0.18 which corresponds to a rate of change of 0.12 per decade. The tendency is for schools with high average GPAs to also have high rates of change and for schools with low average GPAs to continue to have low rates of change. Essentially, the gap keeps widening between the high and low GPA schools. It seems that flagship state schools in the South have the highest contemporary rates of grade inflation.
As I have noted in previous grade inflation posts, GPAs are higher at private schools. So are average rates of grade inflation. The average GPA change for private schools shown in the figure is 0.23 or a rate of 0.15 per decade. I don't mean to pick on these schools. They just happen to be schools where I can find or that have generously provided me good data. Yale, Stanford, Amherst, and Williams all likely have average GPAs in the 3.5 to 3.6 range that are rising to the tune of 0.1 or greater per decade as well. They just choose not to make their recent data public. When pressed, some of their leaders will say that their students are better than ever and they have no grade inflation. If that's the case, I would think that they would want to celebrate their high grades, maybe take out full page ads in the NY Times announcing that A is now average at their institutions. Yes, I know. Unlike my discussion of public schools, I've just named a few stinkers. Whoops. But really now. These schools will swear up and down that they are committed to open scholarship. Except they aren't. OK, enough of my rant.
The "sweet spots" for high rates of inflation at private schools right now are those schools that are less selective than the elites. They are just trying to catch up to those schools with average GPAs already in the 3.5 to 3.6 range. But those with high GPAs continue to have grade inflation.
It's worth noting Princeton at the far right of the second graph. It is the only private school on this list doing anything about keeping grades in check. First Princeton went public with its data. Then it actually implemented a policy. It's working, too. Grades have gone down significantly at Princeton over the last several years. Princeton deserves kudos. Its leadership and faculty provide a lesson on how institutions, even colleges and universities, can behave responsibly. You have a problem. You solve it. End of story. It really shouldn't be that hard now should it?
I have good data on changes in grades from over 50 schools over the last 20 years. That's a dramatic improvement in quantity over my last major update of gradeinflation.com in 2003. Back then I focused simply on the magnitude of grade changes from school to school. But that approach leaves out an important piece of information. What are average GPAs today? The two figures below try to provide a better picture of where each school stands in terms of its grading.
The first graph shows grade changes over a 15 year time interval (most over the interval 1991-2006; a few over the interval 1990-2005) for public schools. You can click on the graph for better detail. This is the kind of graph that makes schools reluctant to give me data because I name names. But in my opinion, it is silly for a school to hide data like this for any reason. It runs counter to any idea of what it means to be part of a community of scholars. I'm doing research on grading trends. Why wouldn't a university or college want to be open to research? If they are embarrassed about their rising grades, then they should try to fix their problem not hide it. This is all so obvious that I wonder why I just wrote the last few sentences.Anyway, there have been many cooperative schools and I won't name the stinkers because I'm hoping that one day they'll actually come around to making their data public. The average GPA change for public schools over this recent 15 year interval is 0.18 which corresponds to a rate of change of 0.12 per decade. The tendency is for schools with high average GPAs to also have high rates of change and for schools with low average GPAs to continue to have low rates of change. Essentially, the gap keeps widening between the high and low GPA schools. It seems that flagship state schools in the South have the highest contemporary rates of grade inflation.
As I have noted in previous grade inflation posts, GPAs are higher at private schools. So are average rates of grade inflation. The average GPA change for private schools shown in the figure is 0.23 or a rate of 0.15 per decade. I don't mean to pick on these schools. They just happen to be schools where I can find or that have generously provided me good data. Yale, Stanford, Amherst, and Williams all likely have average GPAs in the 3.5 to 3.6 range that are rising to the tune of 0.1 or greater per decade as well. They just choose not to make their recent data public. When pressed, some of their leaders will say that their students are better than ever and they have no grade inflation. If that's the case, I would think that they would want to celebrate their high grades, maybe take out full page ads in the NY Times announcing that A is now average at their institutions. Yes, I know. Unlike my discussion of public schools, I've just named a few stinkers. Whoops. But really now. These schools will swear up and down that they are committed to open scholarship. Except they aren't. OK, enough of my rant.The "sweet spots" for high rates of inflation at private schools right now are those schools that are less selective than the elites. They are just trying to catch up to those schools with average GPAs already in the 3.5 to 3.6 range. But those with high GPAs continue to have grade inflation.
It's worth noting Princeton at the far right of the second graph. It is the only private school on this list doing anything about keeping grades in check. First Princeton went public with its data. Then it actually implemented a policy. It's working, too. Grades have gone down significantly at Princeton over the last several years. Princeton deserves kudos. Its leadership and faculty provide a lesson on how institutions, even colleges and universities, can behave responsibly. You have a problem. You solve it. End of story. It really shouldn't be that hard now should it?
Friday, February 13, 2009
Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 42
All About Gene Wilder
I live a block away from a Chabad house. For those who don't know, Chabad is an outreach program of the Lubavitcher sect of Orthodox Judaism. They tend to work and have houses near college campuses. I happen to think that they are wasting a lot of money doing this. In the end, a few people every year lay teffilin who normally wouldn't. Sometimes I'll go to their succah during Succoth and say a blessing for old time's sake. I doubt many do this. For me, the best thing about Chabad houses is that they are usually good for working on my rusty Yiddish. But I digress.
A few Friday's ago, I was walking by Chabad. The people inside were reciting prayers after Sabbath dinner. The kids - there are always a lot of kids - were running around in and out of the house unsupervised and I thought of how Jews from the shtetl raised their kids. I know pretty much how they did it. That loose unstructured approach to child rearing that I can see at Chabad was exactly how I was raised. It was exactly how my parents were raised. It's been going on for awhile. It's probably how Gene Wilder, another Milwaukeean, was raised. I'll get to him later in this post.
In Chapel Hill, there was a Chabad near me as well. The kids ran around unsupervised, too. But they were on a busy street. I knocked on the door and talked to the rabbi's wife. I said as nicely as I could (probably not very nice; it's not style unfortunately), "I know you're busy, but this is not some quiet street where kids can run around like that." She looked at me suspiciously and gave me that top to bottom inspection that I know I was raised to do as well. The data from this inspection went in, the appraisal came out that I was Jewish, and she said, "You're probably right. We're new here." Then she shut the door. Over the next few months, I noted that the kids weren't running around near the street as much anymore.
It's a Darwinian approach to child rearing. Children are supposed to learn in packs what to do and what not to do. They are given incredible independence. They run around in synagogue, too. When I first went to a non-Orthodox shul, I was amazed by all the shushing going on. It seemed unrealistic to me that a seven year old was being demanded to sit still through services. I thought to myself, A kindt dahf zayn a kindt. This was the American school of child rearing, I thought. I was happy to have avoided it.
You run around in packs. You learn to think independently. You learn to live by your wits. And if you get out of line - or someone sees you getting out of line - you get a nasty klop on your head, a kind of correction to your behavior. Then you're off running again with your pack. It's definitely not anything close to Dr. Spock, this Yiddish school of child rearing. I happen to think it has its virtues. It certainly beats the raising children like hothouse flowers approach - schedules of soccer, dance, playtimes, painting, etc. that require a digital calendar to maintain - of the upper middle class and wealthy today. Yuck.
My parents raised me the way they were raised. I'm sure they were on their own a lot, that is when they weren't in school. School trumped everything. Unlike your time with your friends, it was highly structured and highly disciplined. There were plenty of klops on the head for even minor indiscretions. You went to school early. First you went to public school. Then if you were a boy you went to cheder. You had your own lantern so you could study at night. It was demanded that you do well. I'm sure there were some homes, both rich and poor, where schooling wasn't considered all that important. That wasn't true for my parents.
My father had schooling through about his 14th year. Then he went to work in his trade. He had a solid command of Hebrew and a disciplined mind. My mother - like I'm guessing almost all girls who grew up in sthetlach - barely knew Hebrew and had just a rudimentary knowledge of religious practice. In my shul growing up, the women were in back during services, separated by birch panels, but I would watch them. Hardly a single one actually knew how to pray. They'd sit and struggle through the service at the level of second graders. I never understood the rationale for this. But that's how they were raised.
Though deficient in Hebrew and hardly knowing a word of Yiddish, my mother was well schooled. Her Polish and her Russian I was told by native Poles and Russians were impeccable. Raised in a shtetl and then in the remoteness of Siberia, somehow she spoke and wrote in the formal style of noblemen. It was as if she had been schooled in the 19th century. When I was a teen, I went to visit a friend whose father had bought a hotel in Jamaica. I went to his boarding school for a day. His geography class had a map of the old British empire and he was taught by a retired British colonel. I thought of my mom as I watched this fossil, with his stiff posture and precise English, teach as if the sun never had set on the British empire. This is what school must have been like for her.
There were no birthday parties. A bar mitzvah was a very minor thing. Celebrations were - except for weddings and circumcisions - not about the individual. Based on religious holidays, they were all about the community and family. My mother used to talk about how special Shabbas was, how it really was a weekly wonderful holiday. It required preparation to make the food. Before every Shabbas, you soaked your hair in kerosene to keep the lice away and then you'd bathe. You'd play with your friends, again in packs, while your parents stayed home after services and spent time with relatives.
In this Yiddish school of child rearing, sometime in your ninth or tenth year, you're reigned in bit by bit. I don't know how this happens. It's just an expectation. You're expected to take on adult duties. All that play time starts to get reduced and you help around the house or if your family has a business, you start to learn that business. You're not a kid anymore. You're an adult in training. This is precisely the time when war broke out for my mother. She wasn't an adult in training anymore. She was an instant adult. She wasn't a bitter person by nature or someone who looked back, but sometimes she would talk about this very fact. It was her personal grudge against Hitler. "That bastard took my childhood away from me."
My mother and father were both exceptionally responsible parents. In some ways that's what defined them. My mother, who thought school lunches were for barbarians, would cook for me most lunchtimes despite her busy day. My father was solicitous in his own way as well, taking me to baseball games even though he thought it was a ridiculous sport.
I'm know my mom and dad's parents were responsible as well. But here is how my mom and dad likely differed from their own parents. They both fervently believed that alts daf zayn far der kinder, everything needed to be for the kids. They were playing it forward. I'm sure many immigrant families are like this, not just families of Holocaust survivors. I'm sure many poor families are like this too. The assumption is that your own life has severe limitations brought on by your past.
You can't break free of your limitations. But somehow, the expectation is that your children can. They don't speak with heavy accents. They understand American culture and its nuances. They are well educated. They have all the advantages that you can't possibly possess. Maybe first and foremost, they aren't scarred by war the way that you are scarred. You expect a lot from your children. They will become what you would have become if you had the chance, doctors, lawyers, professors, people of learning and refinement. You do live through your children.
It's part of all Yiddish culture to do this. It's just more acute with war survivors. English has no word for it. But Yiddish certainly does. It's a specific word for celebrating the triumphs of your children, nieces and nephews, and all the young ones you love, kvel.
My parents loved to kvel, of course. Their friends did as well. Sometimes all of this kvelling, where your child was going to college, what kind of house they were living in, what was their specialization in medical practice, could get out of hand at gatherings. Instead of conversation, meetings degenerated into kvellathons, ever elevating discussions of the achievements of children. "My son is a doctor in the best hospital in New York." "That's nothing, my son runs the best hospital in all of Chicago." And so it went. To be fair, my parents didn't like these kvelathons. They thought people were being far too vain and vulgar. Then again, their children didn't run hospitals, did they?
But there was someone who had the trump card of kvelling: the parents of Gene Wilder the actor. They weren't greener, but unlike many American born Jews of my grandparents age, they seemed to like socializing with immigrants. I never met them. Let me digress. The first time I saw the movie Bonnie and Clyde, a wonderful movie, I saw Gene Wilder in his first role. He had a bit part where he hitches a ride with Bonnie and Clyde. "Where you from?" Faye Dunaway asks. "I'm from Milwaukee," he says. That's his only line in the movie. But I already knew of his existence by way of one of the kvellathons. "That's nothing," his mom or dad likely said. "My son is a big time Hollywood actor!" Of course, he wasn't yet. But he'd get there eventually.
I live a block away from a Chabad house. For those who don't know, Chabad is an outreach program of the Lubavitcher sect of Orthodox Judaism. They tend to work and have houses near college campuses. I happen to think that they are wasting a lot of money doing this. In the end, a few people every year lay teffilin who normally wouldn't. Sometimes I'll go to their succah during Succoth and say a blessing for old time's sake. I doubt many do this. For me, the best thing about Chabad houses is that they are usually good for working on my rusty Yiddish. But I digress.
A few Friday's ago, I was walking by Chabad. The people inside were reciting prayers after Sabbath dinner. The kids - there are always a lot of kids - were running around in and out of the house unsupervised and I thought of how Jews from the shtetl raised their kids. I know pretty much how they did it. That loose unstructured approach to child rearing that I can see at Chabad was exactly how I was raised. It was exactly how my parents were raised. It's been going on for awhile. It's probably how Gene Wilder, another Milwaukeean, was raised. I'll get to him later in this post.
In Chapel Hill, there was a Chabad near me as well. The kids ran around unsupervised, too. But they were on a busy street. I knocked on the door and talked to the rabbi's wife. I said as nicely as I could (probably not very nice; it's not style unfortunately), "I know you're busy, but this is not some quiet street where kids can run around like that." She looked at me suspiciously and gave me that top to bottom inspection that I know I was raised to do as well. The data from this inspection went in, the appraisal came out that I was Jewish, and she said, "You're probably right. We're new here." Then she shut the door. Over the next few months, I noted that the kids weren't running around near the street as much anymore.
It's a Darwinian approach to child rearing. Children are supposed to learn in packs what to do and what not to do. They are given incredible independence. They run around in synagogue, too. When I first went to a non-Orthodox shul, I was amazed by all the shushing going on. It seemed unrealistic to me that a seven year old was being demanded to sit still through services. I thought to myself, A kindt dahf zayn a kindt. This was the American school of child rearing, I thought. I was happy to have avoided it.
You run around in packs. You learn to think independently. You learn to live by your wits. And if you get out of line - or someone sees you getting out of line - you get a nasty klop on your head, a kind of correction to your behavior. Then you're off running again with your pack. It's definitely not anything close to Dr. Spock, this Yiddish school of child rearing. I happen to think it has its virtues. It certainly beats the raising children like hothouse flowers approach - schedules of soccer, dance, playtimes, painting, etc. that require a digital calendar to maintain - of the upper middle class and wealthy today. Yuck.
My parents raised me the way they were raised. I'm sure they were on their own a lot, that is when they weren't in school. School trumped everything. Unlike your time with your friends, it was highly structured and highly disciplined. There were plenty of klops on the head for even minor indiscretions. You went to school early. First you went to public school. Then if you were a boy you went to cheder. You had your own lantern so you could study at night. It was demanded that you do well. I'm sure there were some homes, both rich and poor, where schooling wasn't considered all that important. That wasn't true for my parents.
My father had schooling through about his 14th year. Then he went to work in his trade. He had a solid command of Hebrew and a disciplined mind. My mother - like I'm guessing almost all girls who grew up in sthetlach - barely knew Hebrew and had just a rudimentary knowledge of religious practice. In my shul growing up, the women were in back during services, separated by birch panels, but I would watch them. Hardly a single one actually knew how to pray. They'd sit and struggle through the service at the level of second graders. I never understood the rationale for this. But that's how they were raised.
Though deficient in Hebrew and hardly knowing a word of Yiddish, my mother was well schooled. Her Polish and her Russian I was told by native Poles and Russians were impeccable. Raised in a shtetl and then in the remoteness of Siberia, somehow she spoke and wrote in the formal style of noblemen. It was as if she had been schooled in the 19th century. When I was a teen, I went to visit a friend whose father had bought a hotel in Jamaica. I went to his boarding school for a day. His geography class had a map of the old British empire and he was taught by a retired British colonel. I thought of my mom as I watched this fossil, with his stiff posture and precise English, teach as if the sun never had set on the British empire. This is what school must have been like for her.
There were no birthday parties. A bar mitzvah was a very minor thing. Celebrations were - except for weddings and circumcisions - not about the individual. Based on religious holidays, they were all about the community and family. My mother used to talk about how special Shabbas was, how it really was a weekly wonderful holiday. It required preparation to make the food. Before every Shabbas, you soaked your hair in kerosene to keep the lice away and then you'd bathe. You'd play with your friends, again in packs, while your parents stayed home after services and spent time with relatives.
In this Yiddish school of child rearing, sometime in your ninth or tenth year, you're reigned in bit by bit. I don't know how this happens. It's just an expectation. You're expected to take on adult duties. All that play time starts to get reduced and you help around the house or if your family has a business, you start to learn that business. You're not a kid anymore. You're an adult in training. This is precisely the time when war broke out for my mother. She wasn't an adult in training anymore. She was an instant adult. She wasn't a bitter person by nature or someone who looked back, but sometimes she would talk about this very fact. It was her personal grudge against Hitler. "That bastard took my childhood away from me."
My mother and father were both exceptionally responsible parents. In some ways that's what defined them. My mother, who thought school lunches were for barbarians, would cook for me most lunchtimes despite her busy day. My father was solicitous in his own way as well, taking me to baseball games even though he thought it was a ridiculous sport.
I'm know my mom and dad's parents were responsible as well. But here is how my mom and dad likely differed from their own parents. They both fervently believed that alts daf zayn far der kinder, everything needed to be for the kids. They were playing it forward. I'm sure many immigrant families are like this, not just families of Holocaust survivors. I'm sure many poor families are like this too. The assumption is that your own life has severe limitations brought on by your past.
You can't break free of your limitations. But somehow, the expectation is that your children can. They don't speak with heavy accents. They understand American culture and its nuances. They are well educated. They have all the advantages that you can't possibly possess. Maybe first and foremost, they aren't scarred by war the way that you are scarred. You expect a lot from your children. They will become what you would have become if you had the chance, doctors, lawyers, professors, people of learning and refinement. You do live through your children.
It's part of all Yiddish culture to do this. It's just more acute with war survivors. English has no word for it. But Yiddish certainly does. It's a specific word for celebrating the triumphs of your children, nieces and nephews, and all the young ones you love, kvel.
My parents loved to kvel, of course. Their friends did as well. Sometimes all of this kvelling, where your child was going to college, what kind of house they were living in, what was their specialization in medical practice, could get out of hand at gatherings. Instead of conversation, meetings degenerated into kvellathons, ever elevating discussions of the achievements of children. "My son is a doctor in the best hospital in New York." "That's nothing, my son runs the best hospital in all of Chicago." And so it went. To be fair, my parents didn't like these kvelathons. They thought people were being far too vain and vulgar. Then again, their children didn't run hospitals, did they?
But there was someone who had the trump card of kvelling: the parents of Gene Wilder the actor. They weren't greener, but unlike many American born Jews of my grandparents age, they seemed to like socializing with immigrants. I never met them. Let me digress. The first time I saw the movie Bonnie and Clyde, a wonderful movie, I saw Gene Wilder in his first role. He had a bit part where he hitches a ride with Bonnie and Clyde. "Where you from?" Faye Dunaway asks. "I'm from Milwaukee," he says. That's his only line in the movie. But I already knew of his existence by way of one of the kvellathons. "That's nothing," his mom or dad likely said. "My son is a big time Hollywood actor!" Of course, he wasn't yet. But he'd get there eventually.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, February 11th, 2009
Here are the top 40 spins for this week on about 50 AAA and Jazz stations. It's great to see Eleni Mandell number one on any list. I saw her play down in LA a couple of weeks ago. She is a pro. This new release is an attempt to try to get some serious attention by playing loud. I hope it works for her. Playing quiet and well didn't seem to translate into people coming to shows except in Europe. This must be somewhere around her seventh album. Right now she's one of those people whose talent never seems to translate into an audience. It's a mystery to me as to why that happens, but it does more often than not. The exceptions are always nice to see.
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss are number two after all of their Grammy wins. The appeal of this CD is another mystery to me. I saw them live as well. Alison Krauss sings like a sweet bird as always. But then there is Plant, who probably lost his voice about twenty years ago. The combination is to my ears - all that talent mixed with none - painful and the songs are dull. Plus the old codger/young woman vibe is kind of creepy, like watching that old Audrey Hepburn/Fred Astaire movie Funny Face. In starting this chart, I made a rule that I'd only say nice things about CDs and ignore the bad because why should anyone bother? I just broke that rule. I'll try not to let it happen again. Honest.
1 Eleni Mandell Artificial Fire Zedtone 2009
2 Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Raising Sand Rounder 2007
3 The Blue Note 7 Mosaic: A Celebration Of Blue Note Records The Blue Note Label 2009
4 Eliane Elias Bossa Nova Stories Somethin' Else / Blue Note 2009
5 Benny Golson New Time, New 'Tet Concord 2009
6 Bruce Springsteen Working On A Dream Columbia 2009
6 Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock & Jack DeJohnette Yesterdays ECM 2009
8 Andrew Bird Noble Beast Fat Possum 2009
8 Ann Hampton Callaway At Last Telarc Jazz 2009
8 The Clayton Brothers Brother To Brother ArtistShare 2008
11 The Derek Trucks Band Already Free Sony / Victor 2009
12 Cassandra Wilson Loverly Blue Note 2008
13 James Moody & Hank Jones Our Delight IPO 2008
14 Dan Auerbach Keep It Hid Nonesuch 2009
15 Hendrik Meurkens Samba To Go! Zoho 2009
15 The BPA I Think We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat Southern Fried 2009
15 Michael Wolff Joe's Strut Wrong 2009
18 Tony Monaco Live At The Orbit Room Chicken Coup 2008
18 Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 Goodnight Oslo Yep Roc 2009
18 Gary Smulyan High Noon Reservoir 2008
21 Miles Davis Kind Of Blue Columbia 1959
21 Ruthie Foster The Truth According To Ruthie Foster Blue Corn 2009
21 Roger Kellaway Live At The Jazz Standard IPO 2008
24 David Byrne & Brian Eno Everything That Happens Will Happen Today Todomundo 2008
24 U2 No Line On The Horizon Interscope 2009
26 The Bird And The Bee Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future The Blue Note Label 2009
26 Claudio Roditi Brazilliance x4 Resonance 2008
28 Dar Williams Spring Again Razor & Tie 2008
28 Heartless Bastards The Mountain Fat Possum 2009
28 The Miami Saxophone Quartet Fourtified Fourtitude 2008
28 The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra Monday Night Live At The Village Vanguard Planet Arts 2008
32 Deborah Latz Lifeline June Moon 2008
32 Steve Herberman Ideals Reach 2008
32 The Pretenders Break Up The Concrete Shangri-La 2008
32 Ali Jackson Wheelz Keep Rollin' Bigwenzee 2008
32 Todd Coolman Perfect Strangers Artist Share 2009
32 Randy Brecker Randy In Brasil MAMA 2008
38 Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion Domino 2009
38 John Stetch Tv Trio Brux 2008
38 Coldplay Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends Capitol 2008
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss are number two after all of their Grammy wins. The appeal of this CD is another mystery to me. I saw them live as well. Alison Krauss sings like a sweet bird as always. But then there is Plant, who probably lost his voice about twenty years ago. The combination is to my ears - all that talent mixed with none - painful and the songs are dull. Plus the old codger/young woman vibe is kind of creepy, like watching that old Audrey Hepburn/Fred Astaire movie Funny Face. In starting this chart, I made a rule that I'd only say nice things about CDs and ignore the bad because why should anyone bother? I just broke that rule. I'll try not to let it happen again. Honest.
1 Eleni Mandell Artificial Fire Zedtone 2009
2 Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Raising Sand Rounder 2007
3 The Blue Note 7 Mosaic: A Celebration Of Blue Note Records The Blue Note Label 2009
4 Eliane Elias Bossa Nova Stories Somethin' Else / Blue Note 2009
5 Benny Golson New Time, New 'Tet Concord 2009
6 Bruce Springsteen Working On A Dream Columbia 2009
6 Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock & Jack DeJohnette Yesterdays ECM 2009
8 Andrew Bird Noble Beast Fat Possum 2009
8 Ann Hampton Callaway At Last Telarc Jazz 2009
8 The Clayton Brothers Brother To Brother ArtistShare 2008
11 The Derek Trucks Band Already Free Sony / Victor 2009
12 Cassandra Wilson Loverly Blue Note 2008
13 James Moody & Hank Jones Our Delight IPO 2008
14 Dan Auerbach Keep It Hid Nonesuch 2009
15 Hendrik Meurkens Samba To Go! Zoho 2009
15 The BPA I Think We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat Southern Fried 2009
15 Michael Wolff Joe's Strut Wrong 2009
18 Tony Monaco Live At The Orbit Room Chicken Coup 2008
18 Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 Goodnight Oslo Yep Roc 2009
18 Gary Smulyan High Noon Reservoir 2008
21 Miles Davis Kind Of Blue Columbia 1959
21 Ruthie Foster The Truth According To Ruthie Foster Blue Corn 2009
21 Roger Kellaway Live At The Jazz Standard IPO 2008
24 David Byrne & Brian Eno Everything That Happens Will Happen Today Todomundo 2008
24 U2 No Line On The Horizon Interscope 2009
26 The Bird And The Bee Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future The Blue Note Label 2009
26 Claudio Roditi Brazilliance x4 Resonance 2008
28 Dar Williams Spring Again Razor & Tie 2008
28 Heartless Bastards The Mountain Fat Possum 2009
28 The Miami Saxophone Quartet Fourtified Fourtitude 2008
28 The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra Monday Night Live At The Village Vanguard Planet Arts 2008
32 Deborah Latz Lifeline June Moon 2008
32 Steve Herberman Ideals Reach 2008
32 The Pretenders Break Up The Concrete Shangri-La 2008
32 Ali Jackson Wheelz Keep Rollin' Bigwenzee 2008
32 Todd Coolman Perfect Strangers Artist Share 2009
32 Randy Brecker Randy In Brasil MAMA 2008
38 Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion Domino 2009
38 John Stetch Tv Trio Brux 2008
38 Coldplay Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends Capitol 2008
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
From Above Average To Way Above Average To Pure Absolute Genius: A History of College Grading in America
People tend to view grading in colleges as something that was set in stone centuries ago. But how we tend to grade today - a 4.0 system - is a relatively new thing and its nuances keep changing. A nationwide version of a more or less 4.0 system (or 3.0 if A=3 and F=-1) didn't fully emerge until sometime in the 1920s and even then some schools graded on a strict 2.0 curve while others didn't. I have data on grades prior to 1950 from about a dozen schools now - thanks to the help of a anonymous, so far at any rate, and wonderful grade hunter - and they, in addition to more recent data from over 50 schools, help paint a picture of how grades have changed over time. The result is shown above. Click on the figure for better detail. The schools represented can be found at the bottom of this post.
In the past, I've smoothed the data on historical grades to make a pleasing picture. But I have enough data now that I don't have to smooth. I can just graph averages over time. The smoothing, by the way, was essentially doing what automakers did ages ago when they were making car body designs - hand fitting splines - and was a tedious pain in the neck. The raw averages are a little ragged, but are much better because they don't mask information.
I keep getting more data and improving these curves. Right now, I have more than enough data from the 1980s on to document the latest trends. I need more data from before 1960. It looks to be easier to find than I first thought. I imagine in the next few weeks that there will be some refinements.
What seems to be emerging is that prior to the mid-1950s, there was, in a national sense, an average grade for private and public schools that was about the same. There was lots of variability about that average, to be sure. But for private and public schools - at least with the data I have - the highs and lows evened out in much the same way.
The national average grade was about 2.4-2.5. Even then Lake Woebegone was in effect. Average was not C, but a C+/B-. That makes sense, actually. What school wants to be known for having just average students? We wanted our children to be above average in the 1950s. We wanted them to be above average in the 1930s. So it goes today, too. It's human nature, I guess.
But then it appears that the average grade started to bifurcate. In the late 1950s or maybe early 1960s, private schools began to have, on average, higher grades than public schools. Juola, who examined grades from over 100 schools in the 1960s and 1970s (if anyone has his raw data, please, please, please send it my way) suggests much the same thing with his data although he didn't publicize it. His data from 1960 seem to indicate that private schools had average GPAs of 2.5 and public schools had GPAs of 2.4, which is exactly what my data show as well.
Then the gap starts to widen in the Vietnam era. In the words of the late Noel Perrin, a Dartmouth English professor from that time, "we began systematically to inflate grades, so that our graduates would have more A's to wave around." Past the Vietnam era, the gap keeps widening or perhaps past about 1975 stays static with about a 0.3 difference between the public and private schools. Vietnam changed much in America, both little and big. In terms of higher ed, the changes included the development of a two tiered system in national grades. There are actually tiers within those tiers that I'll talk about in another post.
I'm going to give my opinion that this bifurcation of grades represents class distinctions more than anything else. You put in all that money and you want something in return. In private schools, students tend to come from privileged homes. They are higher maintenance and demand more. In terms of grades, they get more as well.
For example, let's look at two pairs of rival state schools: Berkeley versus Stanford and North Carolina versus Duke. Differences in family income between these two pairs of schools are huge, about a $60-90K difference between the public and private institutions. Historically it was money that separated these schools, not academic caliber.
In the mid-1980s, there was likely no difference at all in the caliber of students at UC-Berkeley and at Stanford. Yet in 1986, the mean GPA at Berkeley was 2.86 and Stanford's was 3.30 (I've subtracted out graduate students from the GPA currently listed for Stanford for 1986 in gradeinflation.com). Similarly differences in academic caliber at Duke and North Carolina were likely negligible in 1969, yet the GPA difference was 0.24 (2.55 versus 2.79).
In addition to bifurcation, the above graph shows, of course, that grades are rising. The waning of that rise in public schools as of late seems to be real, but I view it as temporary. As long as private schools continue to inflate, public schools have no recourse but to follow the leader.
In the 1920s to 1950s, student grading, as I noted above, tried to ensure that most students were indeed above average. In the 1960s, we tried to ensure that most of our students were way above average, a kind of super Lake Woebegone effect.
Now we are getting close to making sure that, at least in terms of grading, most of our students are Einsteins. A will be average. We'll get there in about 30 years at hundreds of colleges and universities if current trends hold. Many of those schools are not generally where we educate our best and brightest and even those places that are highly competitive in terms of admissions aren't filled with Einsteins today. They run the gamut from Harvard to William and Mary, from Duke to UNC-Ashville. These schools won't be filled with Einsteins in 2040 either. But we will pretend that they are. We're already pretending.
**********
The data assembled are the result of the help of a lot of very nice people, professors, archivists, registrars, and random acts of kindness from people who are good at finding things on the web. Thanks to all. Truly.
Alabama 1991-2006
Appalachian State 1968-2006
Auburn 1924-2006
Bucknell 1977-2006
Carleton 1974-2004
Central Florida 1976-2006
Central Michigan 1977-2006
Colorado 1989-2006
Cornell 1990-2006
CSU-East Bay 1980-1999
CSU-Fullerton 1976-2005
CSU-San Bernardino 1965-2006
Dartmouth 1989-2006
Duke 1932-1960, 1969-2006
Elon, 1991-2006
Florida 1989-2006
Furman 1951-2006
Georgia 1974-2004
Georgia Tech 1972-2006
Georgetown 1974-2006
Hampden-Sydney 1988-2006
Harvard 1985-2005
Harvey Mudd 1973-2006
Hope 1969-2006
Houston 1988-2006
Kansas 1984-2006
Kent State 1967-1998
Kenyon 1956-2006
Knox, 1942-2006
Messiah 1990-2006
Middlebury 1988-2005
Minnesota 1963-1997
Nebraska-Kearney 1990-2006
North Carolina – Asheville 1986-2006
North Carolina – Greensboro 1988-2006
North Carolina - Chapel Hill 1967-2006
North Carolina State 1986-2006
Northern Iowa 1976-2006
Northern Michigan 1991-2006
Ohio State 1980-2006
Penn State 1975-2006
Pomona 1944-2006
Princeton 1971-2006
Purdue 1976-2006
Stanford 1927-1948, 1968-1992
Southern Illinois, 1991-2006
Texas 1986-2006
Texas A&M 1985-2006
Texas State 1960-2006
U Washington 1974-2006
UC-Irvine 1982-2002
UCLA 1927-2006
Utah 1961-2006
UW-La Crosse 1977-2006
UW-Madison 1938-2006
UW-Oshkosh 1990-2005
Western Washington 1990-2004
Wheaton 1984-2006
William & Mary 1986-2005
Williams 1953-1999
Winthrop 1987-2005
Friday, February 06, 2009
Tales From The Old Country and Beyond, Part 41
Getting Away With Murder
My parents by and large used the same workers from construction site to site. Like any business, construction is about managing people. Once they found someone they thought did a good job, they stuck with him (and it was always a him and still is; females in the world of construction are still only present on office calendars).
Independent contractors are a fierce bunch. They are first and foremost, as their name obviously indicates, independent. A building needs some level of organization. Every subcontractor has their task that has to take place at a certain time. But for the most part, these people, even the good ones, don't take to other people's schedules well. They scream, threaten and they used to get into fist fights as well, but they stopped doing that in the 1970s with the rise of lawsuits.
My dad's subcontractors would frequently come to our house to chat and get paid. My parents almost always paid on time. The faces were familiar to me. There was Gene the landscaper who was, unlike everyone else, calm with a perpetual smile that lit up his tanned, heavily lined face. There was Tom the brick mason, who I liked because he'd play football with me in the front yard or on the street.
Of course, there was Bruce, the foundation mason, who my father fought with constantly. They were two of a kind. Both were competitive. Both could take not an ounce of sh*t from anyone. My father was convinced that Bruce was an anti-Semite and he probably was. He used to call my dad a "fucking kike Jew" routinely. But maybe that was just construction talk for all I know.
I used to ask my dad why he put up with Bruce. His answer was simply, "Because he does the best fucking job in town.*" Bruce was a perfectionist. He wouldn't come to the job unless the temperature was just right for pouring concrete. My dad had an aversion to starting jobs in the summer - people were easier to hire in the fall through spring because there was less competition out there for their services - which meant, given that we lived in frigid Wisconsin, there weren't a whole lot of days when my father was starting a new building that were acceptable to Bruce. He would balk at starting when my father wanted him to start. And then the battles would begin.
The screams, the shouts, the threats, the job gets done, and then hard feelings linger. When it was all over Bruce would come by to get paid, and say something to the effect, "If you wouldn't fucking pay me on time you Jew bastard, I'd never work for you." And my father would say something to the effect, "You fucking German somavabitch, get the fuck out of my house." Every winter there would be a new job. Every winter this battle would happen. It was comical in a way.
But there was one subcontractor whose tenure with my father was shorter than the rest. Mr. Krueger, my father's plumber, was murdered in about 1968. He was dour man, huge the way Wisconsin men tend to be huge, with about a 44" waist. My mother liked him because he didn't shout and scream like almost all the others and was very professional, showing up on time and never trying to change prices after the bid. He was a solid family man with grown daughters. My mother would spend time with his wife. She gave him the highest compliment she gave any Gentile. "Krueger is a voler Crist," she would say. There were few Gentiles on this planet my mother bestowed any compliments upon. But to call a Gentile good and righteous was a once in a blue moon thing.
Krueger had a junior partner that we never spent any time with. My mother didn't like him at all. Krueger's business wasn't particularly profitable. It was about a four person operation and Krueger tended to both bid low and do quality work, which meant most of the money he earned covered expenses. The junior partner had dreams of building up the business into some big thing. Krueger was happy to have a modest house on the South Side, a working car, and food on the table.
A quiet, soft-spoken man known by hardly anyone, his murder barely caused a ripple in Milwaukee. I remember reading about it in the local section of the Milwaukee Journal, a little column about it on about the fourth page. Mrs. Krueger was of course devastated. She had lost both love and the means to pay her bills. She tried to take over her share of the business but the junior partner literally changed the locks on the doors of the office and kicked her out.
It was clear to the police that the murder was a professional job. Someone had hired a hit man. It was clear to everyone who that someone was. But there was only circumstantial evidence.
Mrs. Krueger would drive up to our house - a solid 40 minute drive - have coffee and cake with my mother and unload about how the murder case wasn't going well, how the police didn't know what they were doing, how she was struggling to make ends meet, and how much she missed her husband. My mother would listen sympathetically. This was one of her strengths. She would nod her head in agreement and shout out what an injustice this all was.
The visits lasted for years. They consisted of the same thing over and over. Coffee. Cake. A woman wailing and crying. My mother sympathizing. I got the sense that Mrs. Krueger had a circuit of people she visited to try and feel better. My mother was one of many. But I didn't know that for sure.
Finally, the Milwaukee DA decided to prosecute. This caused more frequent visits on the part of Mrs. Krueger. She was getting excited. Justice would be served.
My mother would say after she left, "We'll see." She believed strongly that justice should be attempted to be served. But her personal experiences told her that usually it didn't happen. On issues of government and law, my mother's attitude was consistent. Hope for the best and expect the worst in terms of human behavior.
In a display not really about curiosity and almost all about showing Mrs. Krueger some emotional support, my mother drove down to the courthouse and watched the trial. She brought me with her one day. I was energized by the thought of it. I'd never been to a murder trial. Thoughts of Perry Mason flashed through my head.
But what I saw was nothing close to drama. The courtroom was nearly empty. The assistant DA was inarticulate, sour faced, and seemed to have the words "loser" tattooed on his forehead. The air was stale and filled with the sense of defeat. I watched one of the daughters come to the witness stand and tell her tale of the battles between Krueger and the junior partner. But there was no hard evidence. The junior partner was no genius and a lousy plumber to boot, but he'd somehow squirreled away a few thousand dollars - enough to hire a hit man - and not leave one drop of evidence. Even my mother was surprised by this. "A dummy like him. How could he plan such a thing?"
The trial ended predictably. Not guilty was the verdict. My mother was upset, but her anger was muted by the experience of other disappointments in her life when the good and the righteous were murdered. "Such a bastard and he gets away with this," she said. She came home and I could sense her fatalism and resignation. She barely talked about the trial the next day.
Mrs. Krueger would still visit on occasion. My mother would listen sympathetically as Mrs. Krueger talked and cried. The time between visits started to lengthen. I left for college. I never saw Mrs. Krueger again.
****************
*When we moved to Chapel Hill, we built a new house. The quality of construction in the South is always crap. It's a wonder nothing falls down. I came to the construction site when they were doing the basement. This was one f*cked up job. There was no care in the workmanship. The mortar was slapped on so sloppily that I thought a 12 year old could do better. I wanted to scream. But you can't do that in the South. That's considered impolite. You can't show up a subcontractor or he just might walk off the job because you've made him lose face. It's almost a Japanese thing, I guess. So I sucked it up. And I thought of Bruce.
I'd call my mom on the phone after my visits to the construction site and tell her how no one here, absolutely no one, knew how to build anything. When she came down for a visit after it was all done, she said, "You were right. You should have just brought down my crew to do it. It would have been cheaper in the long run and better." The house still stands to the best of my knowledge. It's over fifteen years old. Wonders never cease.
My parents by and large used the same workers from construction site to site. Like any business, construction is about managing people. Once they found someone they thought did a good job, they stuck with him (and it was always a him and still is; females in the world of construction are still only present on office calendars).
Independent contractors are a fierce bunch. They are first and foremost, as their name obviously indicates, independent. A building needs some level of organization. Every subcontractor has their task that has to take place at a certain time. But for the most part, these people, even the good ones, don't take to other people's schedules well. They scream, threaten and they used to get into fist fights as well, but they stopped doing that in the 1970s with the rise of lawsuits.
My dad's subcontractors would frequently come to our house to chat and get paid. My parents almost always paid on time. The faces were familiar to me. There was Gene the landscaper who was, unlike everyone else, calm with a perpetual smile that lit up his tanned, heavily lined face. There was Tom the brick mason, who I liked because he'd play football with me in the front yard or on the street.
Of course, there was Bruce, the foundation mason, who my father fought with constantly. They were two of a kind. Both were competitive. Both could take not an ounce of sh*t from anyone. My father was convinced that Bruce was an anti-Semite and he probably was. He used to call my dad a "fucking kike Jew" routinely. But maybe that was just construction talk for all I know.
I used to ask my dad why he put up with Bruce. His answer was simply, "Because he does the best fucking job in town.*" Bruce was a perfectionist. He wouldn't come to the job unless the temperature was just right for pouring concrete. My dad had an aversion to starting jobs in the summer - people were easier to hire in the fall through spring because there was less competition out there for their services - which meant, given that we lived in frigid Wisconsin, there weren't a whole lot of days when my father was starting a new building that were acceptable to Bruce. He would balk at starting when my father wanted him to start. And then the battles would begin.
The screams, the shouts, the threats, the job gets done, and then hard feelings linger. When it was all over Bruce would come by to get paid, and say something to the effect, "If you wouldn't fucking pay me on time you Jew bastard, I'd never work for you." And my father would say something to the effect, "You fucking German somavabitch, get the fuck out of my house." Every winter there would be a new job. Every winter this battle would happen. It was comical in a way.
But there was one subcontractor whose tenure with my father was shorter than the rest. Mr. Krueger, my father's plumber, was murdered in about 1968. He was dour man, huge the way Wisconsin men tend to be huge, with about a 44" waist. My mother liked him because he didn't shout and scream like almost all the others and was very professional, showing up on time and never trying to change prices after the bid. He was a solid family man with grown daughters. My mother would spend time with his wife. She gave him the highest compliment she gave any Gentile. "Krueger is a voler Crist," she would say. There were few Gentiles on this planet my mother bestowed any compliments upon. But to call a Gentile good and righteous was a once in a blue moon thing.
Krueger had a junior partner that we never spent any time with. My mother didn't like him at all. Krueger's business wasn't particularly profitable. It was about a four person operation and Krueger tended to both bid low and do quality work, which meant most of the money he earned covered expenses. The junior partner had dreams of building up the business into some big thing. Krueger was happy to have a modest house on the South Side, a working car, and food on the table.
A quiet, soft-spoken man known by hardly anyone, his murder barely caused a ripple in Milwaukee. I remember reading about it in the local section of the Milwaukee Journal, a little column about it on about the fourth page. Mrs. Krueger was of course devastated. She had lost both love and the means to pay her bills. She tried to take over her share of the business but the junior partner literally changed the locks on the doors of the office and kicked her out.
It was clear to the police that the murder was a professional job. Someone had hired a hit man. It was clear to everyone who that someone was. But there was only circumstantial evidence.
Mrs. Krueger would drive up to our house - a solid 40 minute drive - have coffee and cake with my mother and unload about how the murder case wasn't going well, how the police didn't know what they were doing, how she was struggling to make ends meet, and how much she missed her husband. My mother would listen sympathetically. This was one of her strengths. She would nod her head in agreement and shout out what an injustice this all was.
The visits lasted for years. They consisted of the same thing over and over. Coffee. Cake. A woman wailing and crying. My mother sympathizing. I got the sense that Mrs. Krueger had a circuit of people she visited to try and feel better. My mother was one of many. But I didn't know that for sure.
Finally, the Milwaukee DA decided to prosecute. This caused more frequent visits on the part of Mrs. Krueger. She was getting excited. Justice would be served.
My mother would say after she left, "We'll see." She believed strongly that justice should be attempted to be served. But her personal experiences told her that usually it didn't happen. On issues of government and law, my mother's attitude was consistent. Hope for the best and expect the worst in terms of human behavior.
In a display not really about curiosity and almost all about showing Mrs. Krueger some emotional support, my mother drove down to the courthouse and watched the trial. She brought me with her one day. I was energized by the thought of it. I'd never been to a murder trial. Thoughts of Perry Mason flashed through my head.
But what I saw was nothing close to drama. The courtroom was nearly empty. The assistant DA was inarticulate, sour faced, and seemed to have the words "loser" tattooed on his forehead. The air was stale and filled with the sense of defeat. I watched one of the daughters come to the witness stand and tell her tale of the battles between Krueger and the junior partner. But there was no hard evidence. The junior partner was no genius and a lousy plumber to boot, but he'd somehow squirreled away a few thousand dollars - enough to hire a hit man - and not leave one drop of evidence. Even my mother was surprised by this. "A dummy like him. How could he plan such a thing?"
The trial ended predictably. Not guilty was the verdict. My mother was upset, but her anger was muted by the experience of other disappointments in her life when the good and the righteous were murdered. "Such a bastard and he gets away with this," she said. She came home and I could sense her fatalism and resignation. She barely talked about the trial the next day.
Mrs. Krueger would still visit on occasion. My mother would listen sympathetically as Mrs. Krueger talked and cried. The time between visits started to lengthen. I left for college. I never saw Mrs. Krueger again.
****************
*When we moved to Chapel Hill, we built a new house. The quality of construction in the South is always crap. It's a wonder nothing falls down. I came to the construction site when they were doing the basement. This was one f*cked up job. There was no care in the workmanship. The mortar was slapped on so sloppily that I thought a 12 year old could do better. I wanted to scream. But you can't do that in the South. That's considered impolite. You can't show up a subcontractor or he just might walk off the job because you've made him lose face. It's almost a Japanese thing, I guess. So I sucked it up. And I thought of Bruce.
I'd call my mom on the phone after my visits to the construction site and tell her how no one here, absolutely no one, knew how to build anything. When she came down for a visit after it was all done, she said, "You were right. You should have just brought down my crew to do it. It would have been cheaper in the long run and better." The house still stands to the best of my knowledge. It's over fifteen years old. Wonders never cease.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Uncle Stuey's American Top 40, February 4th, 2009
Here's the weekly list of top spins on about 50 AAA and Jazz stations around the country. I got around to listening to Andrew Bird's CD all the way through. It's definitely worth more listening. Andrew Bird is a good music story. One guy starts to make album after album. At about album number four, people start noticing. He tours like crazy. Word of mouth builds. He puts out a couple of more albums. His audience grows. Last week he played Carnegie Hall. Yet he has no major record deal. He has no real radio play. I doubt he sells more than 30,000 CDs or equivalent downloads.
The bottom line is through a long sustained effort and a couple of compliments in the webzine Pitchfork (why this webzine is so influential I have no idea), he can manage to get a couple thousand people to pay and watch him play. That's the way it's done nowadays.
1 Benny Golson New Time, New 'Tet Concord
1 The Blue Note 7 Mosaic: A Celebration Of Blue Note Records The Blue Note Label
3 Buddy Holly Peggy Sue [Single] Coral
4 The Clayton Brothers Brother To Brother ArtistShare
5 Antony & The Johnsons The Crying Light Secretly Canadian
5 Ann Hampton Callaway At Last Telarc Jazz
7 Andrew Bird Noble Beast Fat Possum
8 Bill Henderson Beautiful Memory: Bill Henderson Live At The Vic Ahuh
9 The Derek Trucks Band Already Free Sony / Victor
10 Colleen McNabb Don't Go To Strangers Zucca
11 James Moody & Hank Jones Our Delight IPO
12 Gary Smulyan High Noon Reservoir
13 Cotton Jones Paranoid Cocoon Suicide Squeeze
14 Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock & Jack DeJohnette Yesterdays ECM
14 The Pretenders Break Up The Concrete Shangri-La
16 Kaki King Dreaming Of Revenge Velour
16 The Miami Saxophone Quartet Fourtified Fourtitude
18 Various Artists My Blueberry Nights [Original Soundtrack] Blue Note
18 Todd Coolman Perfect Strangers Artist Share
20 Jane Monheit The Lovers, The Dreamers And Me Concord
21 Eliane Elias Bossa Nova Stories Somethin' Else / Blue Note
22 Neko Case Middle Cyclone Anti / Epitaph
22 Susan Tedeschi Back To The River VMG
22 The Bad Plus For All I Care Do The Math / Heads Up
22 Bruce Springsteen Working On A Dream Columbia
26 Rokia Traore Tchamantche Nonesuch
27 Bill Cunliffe The Blues And The Abstract Truth Resonance
27 She & Him Volume One Merge
27 Adam Glasser Free At First Sunnyside Communications
27 Joshua Redman Compass Nonesuch
31 Hercules And Love Affair Hercules And Love Affair DFA / Mute
31 Claudio Roditi Brazilliance x4 Resonance
33 Hendrik Meurkens Samba To Go! Zoho
33 David Byrne & Brian Eno Everything That Happens Will Happen Today Todomundo
35 Antony & The Johnsons I Am A Bird Now Secretly Canadian
36 Beausoleil Alligator Purse Yep Rock
36 Ryan Adams & The Cardinals Cardinology Lost Highway
36 The Bird And The Bee Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future The Blue Note Label
36 John Stetch Tv Trio Brux
36 U2 No Line On The Horizon Interscope
The bottom line is through a long sustained effort and a couple of compliments in the webzine Pitchfork (why this webzine is so influential I have no idea), he can manage to get a couple thousand people to pay and watch him play. That's the way it's done nowadays.
1 Benny Golson New Time, New 'Tet Concord
1 The Blue Note 7 Mosaic: A Celebration Of Blue Note Records The Blue Note Label
3 Buddy Holly Peggy Sue [Single] Coral
4 The Clayton Brothers Brother To Brother ArtistShare
5 Antony & The Johnsons The Crying Light Secretly Canadian
5 Ann Hampton Callaway At Last Telarc Jazz
7 Andrew Bird Noble Beast Fat Possum
8 Bill Henderson Beautiful Memory: Bill Henderson Live At The Vic Ahuh
9 The Derek Trucks Band Already Free Sony / Victor
10 Colleen McNabb Don't Go To Strangers Zucca
11 James Moody & Hank Jones Our Delight IPO
12 Gary Smulyan High Noon Reservoir
13 Cotton Jones Paranoid Cocoon Suicide Squeeze
14 Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock & Jack DeJohnette Yesterdays ECM
14 The Pretenders Break Up The Concrete Shangri-La
16 Kaki King Dreaming Of Revenge Velour
16 The Miami Saxophone Quartet Fourtified Fourtitude
18 Various Artists My Blueberry Nights [Original Soundtrack] Blue Note
18 Todd Coolman Perfect Strangers Artist Share
20 Jane Monheit The Lovers, The Dreamers And Me Concord
21 Eliane Elias Bossa Nova Stories Somethin' Else / Blue Note
22 Neko Case Middle Cyclone Anti / Epitaph
22 Susan Tedeschi Back To The River VMG
22 The Bad Plus For All I Care Do The Math / Heads Up
22 Bruce Springsteen Working On A Dream Columbia
26 Rokia Traore Tchamantche Nonesuch
27 Bill Cunliffe The Blues And The Abstract Truth Resonance
27 She & Him Volume One Merge
27 Adam Glasser Free At First Sunnyside Communications
27 Joshua Redman Compass Nonesuch
31 Hercules And Love Affair Hercules And Love Affair DFA / Mute
31 Claudio Roditi Brazilliance x4 Resonance
33 Hendrik Meurkens Samba To Go! Zoho
33 David Byrne & Brian Eno Everything That Happens Will Happen Today Todomundo
35 Antony & The Johnsons I Am A Bird Now Secretly Canadian
36 Beausoleil Alligator Purse Yep Rock
36 Ryan Adams & The Cardinals Cardinology Lost Highway
36 The Bird And The Bee Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future The Blue Note Label
36 John Stetch Tv Trio Brux
36 U2 No Line On The Horizon Interscope
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Apples and Oranges
For over 10 years, Clifford Adelman has made claims based on a longitudinal study of the college transcripts of tens of thousands of those who were high school twelfth graders as of 1972, 1982 and 1992 that grade inflation doesn't exist (or it exists only at elite schools) and that A's are not that easy to get in college. For the last several years, the GPAs from Adelman's work that keep being quoted to prove this are the average GPAs for the 1972, 1982, and 1992 cohorts, 2.70, 2.66, and 2.74, respectively. Those numbers are low. The trend in those numbers is essentially nonexistent. If you believe those numbers, you would indeed believe that C grades are very common and grade inflation doesn't exist. But, in fact, those numbers are unbelievable.
I decided to do a first order check on differences between my analysis (which more or less lines up with other people's analyses) of grade changes over time and Adelman's analysis (which doesn't line up with anyone else). By first order, I mean comparing averages of the populations of grades in the two data sets.
In my work, I've randomly sampled American colleges and universities with the significant qualifiers that I've certainly oversampled elite schools and my sample is weighted to other schools that have online data on grades. In contrast, only three percent of Adelman's schools are highly selective, so in order to make a better comparison with Adelman, I'm going to throw out all but one (which I've picked at random) selective college from my database. Here is my sample of schools to determine a mean equivalent GPA to compare with Adelman's transcript data: Alabama, Arizona, Auburn, Central Michigan, Clarion, Colby, Colorado, Colorado State, CSU-East Bay, CSU-Sacto, CSU-SB, Dixie State, Eastern Oregon, Florida, Georgia Tech, Hampden-Sydney, Houston, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, James Madison, Kent State, Kenyon, Lehigh, LSU, Miami, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana State, Nebraska-Kearney, Norfolk State, Northern Iowa, Northern Michigan, Ohio State, Old Dominion, Pacific Lutheran, Purdue, Sam Houston, Southern Cal, Southern Illinois, Southwest Missouri, Stetson, SUNY-Geneseo, SUNY-Oswego, Texas, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC SB, UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Greensboro, Utah, UW Green Bay, UW LaCrosse, UW Madison, UW Oshkosh, Virginia, Washington, Washington State, Western Michigan, Western Washington, Westmont, Wheaton, William & Mary, and Winthrop. To my mind, that's a nice wide swath of American colleges and universities, 65 total, representing an enrollment of about one million students.
Above I show the distribution of the "latest" mean GPAs for these schools in my 2003 dataset. By "latest," I simply mean the most current data point reported for each school (almost always based on percent grade awarded data, which is essentially a huge transcript for each school), typically between 1998 and 2002. The mean is well off Adelman's means, more than one standard deviation off. There are only 10 schools that fall within the type of GPAs Adelman's transcripts are showing.
The bottom line is that if the means for Adelman's GPAs have low variance (and they do) there is no equivalency. Either the reported means are in error or Adelman isn't sampling anything close to the population I've sampled (or anyone else has sampled for that matter). It's a world of students with a lot of low GPAs that I'm rarely finding on a school level (and I'd love to find them). About 25 percent of all of Adelman's data come from community colleges, and my focus is on four year schools. But this difference at face value seems unlikely to create the dramatic difference in populations. Adelman's GPAs for community colleges are only about 0.1 less than his average GPAs. Perhaps, because he is looking at individual transcripts and many students do drop out, he is significantly oversampling data from first year students, who typically have GPAs a few tenths lower than seniors.
In my database, the average grade nationwide was 3.0 in about the year 2000 regardless as to whether I include or exclude elite private schools. If I limit the 2003 database only to schools with extensive data from 1991-2001, the number goes higher, up to 3.1 (which is the number shown on gradeinflation.com's last full update). Given the numbers of students represented in my dataset, I can say with complete certainty that whatever the numbers 2.70, 2.66, and 2.74 represent, they bear no relation to average GPAs of students at American colleges and universities. Instead about 1/3 of all grades are A's and about 3/4 of all grades are B- or better. Grading is easy in America.
I'm going to make another big assumption and look at the Adelman numbers again, this time for evidence of grade inflation. I'm going to assume that the numbers are off by a lot, but they are all off by the same amount, somewhere about 0.23. This yields GPAs of 2.93, 2.89 and 2.97 for the 1972, 1982, and 1992 high school graduates of Adelman's study, respectively. The first two numbers are actually believable. The first group of students would be sophomores and juniors at around 1975 and the second group at around 1985, a time period when GPAs were on average flat across America. So one half of the time period covered by Adleman's study happens to coincide with a time when grade inflation wasn't happening. On that Adelman and I can both agree. But then the agreement mostly ends. The 1992 data show a rise of 0.08, which is off by a factor of roughly two. Again, I don't know what the numbers 2.70, 2.66, and 2.74 represent, but they bear little relation to changing grading patterns in American colleges and universities from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s.*
Adelman has made the claim that grade inflation is an elite school phenomenon and because those schools get so much attention in the media, it creates the illusion that grade inflation is widespread. This claim is not true. Here are some schools where GPAs rose significantly over the time period of Adelman's study and beyond that are not Harvard, Princeton, et al.:
Adelphi 1995-2004 3.05-3.22
Alabama 1991-2006 2.59-2.90
Central Florida 1984-2007 2.61-2.99
Central Michigan 1977-2006 2.77-2.94
CSU-San Bernardino 1975-2001 2.73-3.00
Florida 1989-2006 2.88-3.29
Furman 1984-2007 2.68-3.22
Georgia 1974-2004 2.74-3.24
Georgia Tech 1972-2007 2.45-2.93
Hampden-Sydney 1988-2007 2.52-2.71
Hope College 1975-2006 2.86-3.38
Houston 1989-2007 2.49-2.64
Kansas 1984-2004 2.94-3.16
Lehigh 1972-2003 2.60-3.04
Messiah 1990-2006 2.90-3.26
Missouri State 1997-2006 2.90-3.02
North Carolina-Chapel Hill 1975-2006 2.82-3.16
North Carolina-Greensboro 1988-2008 2.71-2.90
Northern Iowa 1985-1999 2.69-2.96
Ohio State 1980-2007 2.65-2.99
Ohio University 1986-1998 2.66-2.89
Penn State 1975-2006 2.86-3.07
Purdue University 1986-2006 2.66-2.81
Southern Illinois 1991-2001 2.88-3.08
Southwest Missouri 1979-2001 2.94-3.16
Texas 1986-2006 2.60-3.12
Texas A&M 1985-2008 2.70-2.98
UC-Berkeley 1986-2005 2.95-3.25
UC-Santa Barbara 1994-2006 2.84-3.02
Utah 1975-2007 2.65-3.07
Valdosta State 1994-2004 2.69-2.87
Westmont 1991-1999 3.04-3.24
William and Mary 1986-2005 2.86-3.23
Winthrop 1987-2005 2.49-2.93
Wisconsin-La Crosse 1977-2001 2.85-3.19
Wisconsin-Madison 1974-2007 2.90-3.20
The above schools, randomly found (except for curiosity about places like Madison, where I'm an alumnus, and Chapel Hill, where I lived), represent over 600,000 college students. It's true that rising grades cannot be found at all colleges and universities over the last 20 years. You can find schools that have held the line, but they are rare:
Auburn 1976-2006 2.71-2.73
Nebraska-Kearney 1990-2008 2.88-2.89**
These schools, randomly found, represent about 25,000 college students.
Here's the reality. Grades are up virtually everywhere. If I have a long record of data, on the order of 50 years, GPAs will be up about 0.7. If I have a short record, on the order of 10 years, GPAs will be up about 0.1. Below is a summary plot of all the data I have so far for my next update of gradeinflation.com. Over 70 schools are represented.*** Each data point is one school. The picture tells it all. The next person who tries to tell me that grade inflation is a myth has to be smoking something.
There is some good news, actually. Some colleges and universities have seen their rate of GPA increase significantly slow down or plateau over the last few years (as I'll talk about in my next full update of gradeinflation.com). At a few places that have seriously tried to curtail grade inflation, GPAs have actually dropped; but in the absence of those efforts, rising grades are the rule not the exception.
Grade inflation is so pervasive that in some ways - like with any epidemic - it's more interesting to examine those schools that seem to be immune rather than those that have been susceptible.
Getting back to apples and oranges, perception is the same as reality in the case of grading in America. The reason that there is a perception that grade inflation is widespread is that it is, in fact, widespread. Adelman has spent well over a decade promoting the idea that grade inflation is a myth. He has promoted that idea because that's what his database tells him. But if that is the case, his database bears no relation to the real world. He has warned people about this data that "in discussions of grades and grading in higher education, we ignore them at our own peril." My oh my. Now I'm really scared.
I am reminded of an old friend who absolutely can't find things. One day, he asked his wife as he was prowling around in the kitchen, "Honey, where do we keep the ice?" Adelman has been unable to find evidence of grade inflation, but it's so obvious where that evidence is - readily available in the online databases of university institutional research offices - that it's mind boggling that he hasn't found it yet.
You simply have to make the effort to go online, open some virtual doors and look at real data. It is common practice for scientists to make sure in advance of publication that results based on ensembles of indirect data - such as a database consisting of tens of thousands of individual college transcripts - can match real observations. With regard to the analyses performed by Adelman and his colleagues, that checking apparently was not done. The result has been the prominent display of misinformation and false assessment on the state of grading in American colleges and universities for over a decade.
*******************
*It may be worth noting that Adelman's GPAs for college graduates are much higher and are believable. They are 2.94, 2.88 and 3.04 for 1972, 1982 and 1992 respectively. They are low, but not ridiculously low (college graduates should have GPAs higher than equivalent GPAs based on percent grade awarded data because the latter include grades from poor performing drop outs). They, in fact, suggest that beginning in the early to mid-1980s grade inflation took off after a ten year flat period. Why Adelman chooses not to emphasize this is anyone's guess. That said, Adelman's database time intervals do not line up well with the dominant time periods of grade inflation, the 1960s, and the mid-1980s to present. The absence of data in critical years, as a result, makes the database a suboptimal tool for identifying grade inflation.
**Addendum: You can add University of Wyoming and CSU-Fullerton to the list of grade inflation resistant schools. If you go back to the 1970s and include that data, you can move Purdue from the very modest inflaters to the grade resistant. You can add UCLA and Appalachian State to the list of grade inflaters.
***Below are all the schools for which I have current data that I'm going to post in my next full update of gradeinflation.com. I'm essentially done with data collection for the update, but if someone who reads this has more data, send it my way. I'd especially love to find someone, anyone, who can find schools where grades have been stable. They are, as I noted above, rare. And I do like rare things.
Adelphi
Alabama
Appalachian State
Auburn
Boston U
Brown
Carleton
Central Florida
Central Michigan
Colorado
Colorado State
Columbia
Columbia (Chicago)
Cornell
CSU-Fullerton
CSU-Sacramento
CSU-San Bernardino
Dartmouth
Florida
Furman
George Washington
Georgetown
Georgia
Georgia Tech
Grinnell
Hampden-Sydney
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Hope
Houston
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa State
Kansas
Kenyon
Lehigh
Messiah
Middlebury
Minot State
Missouri S&T
Missouri State
Nebraska-Kearney
Norhern Michigan
North Dakota
Northern Iowa
Ohio State
Oregon
Oshkosh
Penn State
Pomona
Princeton
Sam Houston
SE LA
South FL
Southern CT
Southern Illinois
Stanford
Texas
Texas A&M
UC-Berkeley
UCLA
UC-Santa Barbara
UNC-Chapel Hill
UNC-Greensboro
UNC-Wilmington
Utah
UW-La Crosse
Valdosta State
Washington & Lee
Western Washington
Wheaton
William & Mary
Winthrop
Wisconsin
Wyoming
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