Hat Tip to Whitney Tilson for sending along this fascinating chart in his email blast today. This chart shows PISA data for 15 year olds (10th graders).
Two problems: first from what we can tell from TIMMS, these numbers would probably look worse if we were examining 17 year olds (the U.S. has a large drop in rank between 8th and 12th grade). Second, we are spending far beyond the OECD average on a per pupil basis, especially in the leafy suburbs, so our cost/achievement ratio still probably stinks, even for wealthy White kids.
The real story here is how much closer Hispanics and Blacks in America are to Mexico, the lowest scoring OECD country, than to an internationally competitive level.
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series details a future in which humans have colonized the entire galaxy, which is ruled by a great Galactic Empire. Hari Seldon, an advanced social scientist, calculates that the empire is in terminal and unavoidable decline into chaos and anarchy. Convinced that the catastrophe cannot be prevented, Seldon sets up two Foundations at the opposite ends of the galaxy in order to preserve human knowledge and technology. The mission of these foundations: to shorten the period of barbarism, eventually restoring order, peace and prosperity.
Much of the rest of the series concerns how the initially tiny First Foundation faces one “Seldon Crisis” after another over the course of many centuries. The Foundation knew that their founder, Seldon, had the ability to peer deep into the future. Whenever the Foundation faced an existential threat, they knew that it had been anticipated by Seldon, and that it had a solution. They just had to figure it out. Upon the resolution of a Seldon crisis, a holographic recording of the long dead Seldon (see picture above) would appear to explain how he had calculated the situation would play out, congratulate them for overcoming the crisis and urge them on. The Foundation emerged from each crisis stronger than ever.
I am half-expecting Robert Enlow to discover a dvd from Milton Friedman recorded in 2006 congratulating us on surviving, telling us that he knew we would figure it out, and urging us on to still greater things.
Technically, I think a decade is ending tonight. Or maybe it ended on Dec. 31, 2009. I don’t really care- New Year’s Eve 2010 feels like the end of a decade, and a good excuse for a random pop culture apocalypse: the decade in music.
Ten years ago, I was a thirty-three year old hipster-doofus living in Austin Texas soaking up all-girl Japanese speed metal bands at SXSW. These days as a busy father of three, I don’t get out quite as much. That’s okay, as all-girl Japanese speed metal bands are only good the first time anyway.
Anyhoo, here are what I think are a few music highlights from the last decade.
The biggest change in music over the decade was a shift in the industry itself. The rise of Napster, Ipods and Itunes has killed/is killing the era of record labels getting bands to put one or two popular songs on an album/cd with a collection of lesser efforts and sticking the fan for $15. No thanks- we’ll take the good song for 99 cents, thank you very much.
I came to appreciate what a huge change this was years ago when I a buddy of mine were in Rain in Vegas and we witnessed a basketball arena sized dance club of 20 somethings completely freak out when the DJ played “ABC” by the Jackson Five. I asked a guy next to me “how do you kids even know about this song? Was it on the O.C. or something?” He just said “Dude- this song is totally awesome!”
My next experience along these lines was in a karaoke bar in DC with a group of friends. As a canary in the coal mine for what was to come, a 21 year old looking kid from Georgetown sang “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey, and the place went bananas. Kids were jumping on their chairs, people were going nuts, and I was stunned. “This song was released when I was in 8th grade- how can these kids even be aware of it?” I asked.
“Get with it grandpa!” came the reply.
After that, Don’t Stop Believing went through a pop-culture renaissance that I never would have dreamed possible, led of course by this:
It’s tempting to crown Don’t Stop Believing as the techno-zombie resurrection song of the decade, but there was some good original stuff. I was in a hotel room on business in 2009, and was watching the MTV video music awards out of sheer boredom. I was feeling my age: the whole thing seemed entirely juvenile and absurd. I was watching it mostly out of morbid fascination. The host, that British guy who is currently married to Katy Perry for the next few months, is distilled obnoxious in a bottle.
Anyway, the big build up, Mr. Perry announces that Jay-Z is in a car in Manhattan on his way for the final performance. The tension builds- scenes of the limo driving…Jay-Z walking through the building…
I thought to myself “This is going to totally suck. There is no way this is going to deliver on this much hype.” Early in the song, Jay-Z refers to himself as “the modern-day Sinatra” and I thought “I knew it- this guy is setting himself up for failure.”
But then, about a third of the way in, I started to change my mind. By the end, I was blown away by An Empire State of Mind:
Jay-Z may have 99 problems, but being unable to deliver aint one.
Despite Jay-Z, there can be little doubt that the music industry is in decline. The biggest grossing tours from this year: Bon Jovi and AC/DC. No, that is not a misprint. The fracturing of music into micro-genres makes it difficult for any new act to rise into Rolling Stones/U2 type of global dominance. I heard Alice Cooper discussing his I-tunes inspired popularity in Europe (who knew?) and he basically said that the new acts are at a severe disadvantage these days, because they must compete with the greatest hits of the past, not just with each other. I don’t think Jay-Z is worried about competing with Alice, but I think Alice has a point.
Dinosaur acts can still rock though:
Some day, I’ll have to write an entire post on why I both hate and dig Robert Plant. In the meantime, this collaboration with Alison Kraus was cool:
I seem to have a fascination with duets, really liked this one from Moby and Gwen Steffani:
Nothing of course beats a good spoof. I thought this one was great. When it came out, one of my 20 something coworkers thought the lead singer was hot, and another appreciated the satire. Mix spoof and nostalgia, drink up a tasty cocktail:
The dropping cost of video production now means people can make their own videos. I get a kick out what a group of California film students did with the Yeah, Yeah, Yeah song “Maps.” Low-tech creepy geeky cool:
Of course, the ability to do inexpensive audio remixes has led to the advent of the mash-up. Also known as “bastard pop” this basically entails taking the music from one song and inserting the vocal performance of another. Most of these are not worth a listen, but when it works it is great fun:
and:
and:
Overall, I’d give the last ten years a B-plus, but only because of resurrection factor. Maybe I’m just too old to “get” Lady Ga-Ga. Feel free to enlighten me with links in the comments!
Violating Jay’s hiatus post yet again, just wanted to pass along Wendell Cox’s write up on the new Census numbers. Texas will be gaining **ahem** 4 new Congressional seats after the 2010 Census, Florida will get two, and a variety of Western and Southern state will pick up one, with the notable exception of California, which scored a goose egg. The sclerotic states of the Midwest and Northeast lost seats yet again.
Reactionaries have already started howling. Mother Jones hates the idea, and started spouting conspiracy theories interrupted only by occasional name-calling. Why wait to actually read a plan when you can go ahead and start complaining about it in advance? Some of the Florida papers have been almost as silly, having apparently learned nothing from having opposed Governor Bush’s reforms only to watch with sheepish silence as Florida shot up the NAEP ranks.
After a half century of broadening the wealth gap and decimating the middle class, there are many people who would prefer a return to near feudal conditions, when religion, educational disadvantages and abject poverty were used to more easily control the lower classes. A massive expansion in vouchers would be a giant step in that direction and it should be no surprise that billionaire members of the ruling class (like Scott) are lending their support.
When does my “ruling class” membership card arrive in the mail? I mean really, feudalism gets such a bum rap these days. We don’t need feudalism-we need Neo-Feudalism! You know, the Dead-Hand-of-Clericalism grasps the Invisible-Hand-of-the-Market around the neck of the working class and squeezes!
Oi vey
Stay tuned for the study…I’m afraid the reality will seem terribly reasonable in comparison to the fever dreams of opponents.
This page comes directly from the review. Notice that by the information gathered by the reviewer herself, the percentage of Florida students scoring FCAT 1 (the lowest possible score and the score making a student eligible for retention) in 3rd grade fell from 27% in 2001-02 to 17% in 2008-09. That’s almost a 38% decline.
Likewise, the percentage of African-American students scoring FCAT 1 fell from 41% to 27%, and the Hispanic rate fell from 35% to 21%. Notice that the African-American rate of scoring FCAT 1 now matches the overall rate in 2001-02 had been.
This is called “radical success.”
Notice also that the number of students actually being retained drops by more than half between the first year of the policy and 2008-09. Despite that fact, Florida’s 4th grade NAEP scores continued to climb. If Florida’s NAEP improvement were driven by retention, scores ought to have peaked early in the decade, and then fallen off. Instead, they continued to rise throughout the decade, even as retention declined.
Oh, and Florida’s reading scores improved by almost a grade level before the retention policy even passed. I could go on, point out the practice of mid-year promotions further weakens the “it was all retentions” theory, and/or blather at some length about the regression discontinuity analysis that Jay performed, which strongly points to something other than aging going on with this policy. Click the link if you want to read about it.
The bottom line: these policies worked. The percentage of Florida students scoring below basic on 4th grade reading dropped from 47% to 27% between 1998 and 2009. No one knows exactly how much of which policy moved the needle, but there is a simple solution to this: do all of the policies at the same time.
If Florida lawmakers had mandated in 1999 that students stood off the side of their desks to do jumping jacks to start each school day, and childhood illiteracy dropped like a rock off a cliff, I would be advocating for other states to do the same. At least until such time that someone established that it didn’t add any value.
In some offline conversations I have had with the Think Tank Review people, they seem to think that other states should be “cautious” until we know exactly how much improvement there has been after hair-splitting, and what causes what.
I disagree. In my view, that’s like getting into an argument about whether to use the sprinkler system, the firehose or the buckets of water when kids are running around with their hair on fire. Florida used all the approaches at once, and got great improvement.
Hat Tip to Whitney Tilson for sending along this fascinating chart in his email blast today. This chart shows PISA data for 15 year olds (10th graders).
Posted by matthewladner 
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Jay P. Greene's Blog 