http://www.fromscratchradio.com/show/david-carmel (2/25)

1st part discusses Jumpstart (http://goo.gl/QqSqE) “a non-profit organization that pairs college students and community volunteers with pre-schoolers from low-income households. Throughout the one-year program, children are provided with one-on-one mentoring and exposure to reading.”

Bill Gates has an op-ed today http://wapo.st/gZWULP “How teacher development could revolutionize our schools.”

In Chicago, Tim King’s Urban Prep Academy (h.s.) (“Chicagoan of the Year” http://youtu.be/MBymC_bsZH4) looks like the start of a transformational approach.

In Detroit, the plan for Amanda Rosman’s Boggs Educational Center (elementary) (Aug. 2010 interview http://goo.gl/HiQAn) I think is exactly the right way to go.

Publicizing it in the right communities will be the hard part. Not too long ago, a girl came to my door selling magazines, told me she was trying to save money for college. I asked her if she had considered student loans because I have heard some very bad things about magazine crews, and she told me “remember, I’m black. I can’t get student loans”.

I don’t know if she was kidding around, but it didn’t seem like it. Somehow, that website needs to become known in minority communities. It’s going to have to compete with that older kid who dropped out that seems so cool when you’re 14.

Any ideas on that? One idea I have thought about is that a well-done website could reduce the complexity of pulling yourself out of a bad educational situation. Something that says “here’s where you’re at, and here’s what you can do as steps 1-10, etc”.

“(E)ducation and policing have historically been local matters in the U.S., and Detroit’s government was unable to provide its children with the schooling and safety that should have been their birthright…What it needed was education and safety, not urban renewal..(Its) long decades of suffering do seem to have cleared away some intellectual cobwebs and led some people to understand that education, not infrastructure, is the crucial ingredient for urban rebirth.”

Never has education been so central to addressing the major challenges society faces – eg, unemployment (just 4.8% among college grads), the digital divide, int’l econ competition, income inequality, political awareness/participation.

& yet, as Gail Collins pointed out in the opening to her review of Waiting For Superman (http://nyti.ms/dWKNZs):

“Let’s talk for a minute about education. Already, I can see readers racing for the doors. This is one of the hardest subjects in the world to write about. Many, many people would rather discuss anything else. Sports. Crazy Tea Party candidates. Crop reports.”

Collins contends that “there’s no evidence that teachers’ unions are holding our schools back.”

On the one hand, I doubt her view would be shared by anyone who watched the 2007-08 NewsHour series on Michelle Rhee (eg, “Targeting Teachers, Angering Unions” http://goo.gl/KamzV).

On the other hand, I do agree w/ Collins that the “Obama administration’s Race to the Top program has turned out to be a terrific engine for forcing politicians and unions and education experts to create better ways to get rid of inept or lazy teachers.”

I strongly share your view on increasing teacher pay. (This doesn’t necessarily mean raising the budget for education – DC, the NewsHour series made clear, spends an inordinate amount, but rather allocating it more efficiently.)

As David Leonhardt discussed in his column “The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers” (http://nyti.ms/9vz4M5):

“(N)either (class size or socioeconomic factors) came close to explaining the variation in class performance. So another cause seemed to be the explanation: teachers. Some are highly effective. Some are not. And the differences can affect students for years to come.”

What I almost never see discussed is solving the “student” problem.

In Chicago, for example, I’m particularly troubled by the endemic violence in & around schools in low income communities. If I were advising Rahm, I’d urge him to make school safety his #1 priority. That’s my starting point, but as Diane Ravitch, observed in her critical review of the movie (http://goo.gl/6Mrk), it’s the non-school factors that matter most.

“According to University of Washington economist Dan Goldhaber, about 60 percent of achievement is explained by nonschool factors, such as family income. So while teachers are the most important factor within schools, their effects pale in comparison with those of students’ backgrounds, families, and other factors beyond the control of schools and teachers. Teachers can have a profound effect on students, but it would be foolish to believe that teachers alone can undo the damage caused by poverty and its associated burdens. Guggenheim skirts the issue of poverty by showing only families that are intact and dedicated to helping their children succeed.”

I think this goes right to your point that “helping communities (via an innovative jobs program) is likely a mandatory component of any truly comprehensive “reform” program.”

Your idea for “building a site where people would talk about their career paths..or an “open” Linked-In” is very much worth pursuing.

The website Shatterbox.com (profiled in http://nyti.ms/gdkLG8) is one approach: “We are a video-based social community for students and young professionals to find inspiration and share ideas about innovative careers. We’ve found the most passionate, cutting edge young trailblazers we can get our camera on and asked them, simply, to share their stories.”

I also bet LinkedIn would give serious consideration to ideas that would use the site to help make at-risk students aware of different career paths.

Lastly, I just wanted to mention my belief in the importance of peer groups as well as mentorship.

For me, as well as for my brother & sister, being friends in middle/high school with high achievers played a tremendous role in our academic success – to the point where parental involvement was almost non-existent & unnecessary.

Perhaps coming up with ways to help bring promising students from low income communities together, to form friendships with one another, would also be quite valuable.

As for content creation, I do think voice-to-text holds increasing promise (eg, Dragon Naturally Speaking 11), though I agree, it seems unlikely replace writing/typing for high-quality or more serious content.

In the meantime, I’m impressed with the innovation from Posterous & Tumblr – and ideas like Paper.li. Nonetheless, I think you’ve tapped into a widely shared frustration, & it’s hard to imagine our current tools and interfaces not looking substantially different in the near future.

I’ve had similar experiences on Pownce and to some extent on Twitter.

I think it boils down to the fact that the filters our society uses to move us through the system are necessarily imprecise, and people are smart in many different ways.

Keep Twittering!

Nice post. The best example I can think of (for me personally, at least) that exemplifies your last two articles is reddit. I spend a lot of time on that site, and 90% of that time is spent discussing things with the other users via comments.
I’ve learned several things:

1. There are a lot of smart people out there. And I mean a LOT. It’s absolutely humbling to think you’re hot stuff with top grades from a good engineering school, but then you run into a crowd of people who collectively know pretty much everything about anything you could ever ask. This covers arcane topics from European history and sociology to algebraic topology, quantum field theory, theoretical computer science, economics, and every other field of study there is. Makes you realize that your little S.B. in Computer Science is just that, and nothing more.
2. A cogent, objective, and well thought-out argument will win always triumph over ad hominem. (while perhaps not true in everyday life, it certainly works with the right people)
3. People respect those who admit their faults and learn from mistakes.

Most importantly, though, reddit has broken down cultural stereotypes I’ve had of people. These are shallow stereotypes forged from my very limited experiences and biased extrapolations of what people “ought” to be like. Time and again, I am humbled when I read intelligent posts by not only mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and philosophers, but also secretaries, janitors, ganja-smokers, ex-cons, LOTS of foreigners, day laborers, construction workers, … well you get the picture.
To be fair, you do run across people that make you go ??, but they’re always overshadowed by the ones that impress you.

So, to back what you said, the most important thing reddit has done for me is break down preconceived notions of foreign cultures and teach me to respect my fellow men.

On a side note, I’m afraid my twittering is starting to catch up to your frenetic pace =P

Kevin

i still feel that the internet is starting to suck the life out of relationship… i still believe that calling a friend or family is a better way to keep in touch… visiting them? way better! sometimes people get so tied up with all the gadgets they miss the obvious.. they get to take for granted the more important things that are just right in front of them.

keeping up with the times is not bad… but let’s all be reminded of the GOLDEN MEAN… everything in moderation.

i’d say twittering is a good way to keep in touch.. but nothing beats a “personal” touch

This is a very interesting vision, but I see things very differently.

I think privacy and the potential for anonymity and compartmentalization are actually some of the Internet’s greatest strengths.

The segmentation actually increases participation and the sharing of ideas. If a corporate exec posts as MrGossip on PerezHilton and MrTechie on Gizmodo, he need not worry about being pre-judged by his other activities and interests. If he does choose to try to build a consistent identity, he can choose exactly to what degree to do it.

If this separation capability *didn’t* exist, I think we’d get less participation overall, since people would worry about the cross-”contamination”. Luckily, all signs point to this capability not going away.

For most people, the gains from “wearing your heart on your sleeve” are questionable at best, and it’s largely impossible to distinguish an honest “persona” from simply a well-managed one. I’m sure the Zappos CEO is a perfectly nice guy, but unless he has a camera on him 24/7, we do not know (and it shouldn’t be any of our business) if he’s got a secret handle that he uses to comment on whatever niche forum.

Barring enormous and very improbably changes in human behavior (the disappearance of secrets, prejudice, acceptance of all beliefs, preferences, habits, political leanings, etc. etc.) I don’t see the openness scenario taking place.

Most people still don’t want to live the “Truman Show” existence.

As an aside, I’m surprised that you imply that Twitter is a force against the ‘ol boy’ network. Certainly in many cases it allows the finding of ‘hidden gems’, breaking news, and raw real-time commentary, but on the whole, the people with the strongest presence on the Twitter network are precisely those who have pre-existing strength and followers from other media. (as clearly visible on http://twitterholic.com/ )