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COVID-19 and rethinking grade school

Posted: March 21, 2020 by ng36b in Uncategorized
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Let’s be honest, nobody’s kid is this excited over Kahn Academy!
Techno Source introduces Kurio Xtreme-the Ultimate Android Tablet Built for Kids–designed for extreme play and the safest online experience. Featuring a faster Intel(C) Atom(TM) processor, Bluetooth technology and 24/7 customer support right from the tablet, Xtreme comes with $300+ of kid-safe content, including exclusive Kurio Motion body-controlled games. (CNW Group/Techno Source)

Like most people, my kids are now home from school. At first, I’m sure most kids celebrated, like mine did. Yesterday was a turning point for my youngest daughter though, because when she told me that she was going back to school in another week, I told her that wouldn’t happen.

My prediction is that we don’t go back to anything normal until at least April. While I don’t believe the gloom and doom, 12-18 month recession, Fallout-style post-apocalypse robbing your neighbor for toilet paper worldview that seems to get pushed around, I also don’t think this will quickly resolve itself. We are going to hunker down for a lot longer than anyone imagined. This is not like a hurricane, where the storm passes and normalcy is restored in around 1-2 weeks. It’s going to take a while.

In the aftermath, it’s going to change grade school education. Right now my kid’s schools are struggling with how to fairly teach classes. I say “fairly” because there are still kids that don’t have internet at home, so simply saying “Move your class online” isn’t always going to work. Worse still is that we have lots of parents that just don’t care about their kids education and viewed school as the babysitting service so they could go to work. Normally teachers could cover up this problem, but COVID-19 is tearing that scab off.

There will be a bunch of kids that will benefit from learning at home. People will be surprised to find that in terms of hours of education per day, schools are fairly inefficient at teaching high-performing children. That’s a combination of large class size and the 90/10 rule of poor performing children, where you spend 90% of your time teaching the bottom 10% of your class. At home, in the right setup, a high performing kid can blow through lessons quickly when there is no bullying, food fights, and other distractions.

When these kids go back to school, schools will want to hold them back. We’ll hear about “social development” problems of skipping a grade. But that’s not really an issue. The problem is we view grade level and age as linked, even though we know that some people mature and learn faster than others. In the past, these kids were one-offs because there just wasn’t a lot of them. It’s going to become much more obvious when thousands of kids nation-wide test high enough to merit skipping a grade.

The reverse is true too. Plenty of kids won’t test high enough to merit passing their grade. In many cases it won’t be there fault. Many kids benefit from the structure, discipline and food that comes with school, and too many have parents who can’t or won’t provide a decent home to learn in. We cannot abandoned these kids. As a nation, we should be planning to hold summer schools to catch these kids up.

Perhaps COVID-19 can change how view grade school education in general. Instead of linking age to grade level, we focus more on testing and placing kids according to their performance, giving kids that are high performing more challenges early on. This means they graduate sooner and have more chances at a younger age for higher education. For kids that struggle, why are we not regularly providing summer school? We know the kids that aren’t doing well. Making them come to summer school, both to finish their current grade and to get a jump on the next grade, might be the ticket to better performance. It also gives us an excuse to pay teachers more and give them full-year compensation.

COVID-19 sucks, but it might be what we need to change our old views on grade school education.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

The Tom Brady Tampa Bay Bucks Expectations Game

Posted: March 20, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

A few days ago I wrote about the new expectations that New England Patriots fans should have with Tom Brady no longer on their team. Now lets look at the expectations game for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who have now signed Tom Brady to a contract in keeping with his status as the greatest football player who has ever lived.

As we have demonstrated the New England Patriots were a team that in their 41 year history before Tom Brady came on the scene

  • Had a winning record 55% of the time
  • won 11 or more game (10 in a 14 game season) 14.6% of the time
  • won their division 12% of the time
  • made the playoffs 24% of the time
  • won a playoff game 9.7% of the time
  • went to a championship game 7% of the time winning 0%

but during the twenty years that Brady played for them

  • Had a winning record 100% of the time
  • The Patriots won at least 12 games 70% of the time
  • The Patriots won their division & made the playoffs 90% of the time
  • The Patriots won at LEAST one playoff game 70% of the time
  • The Patriots went to the Superbowl 50% of the time
  • The Patriots WON the superbowl 30% of the time (67% of the times they went)

Let’s now look at the history of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers:

Tampa Bay entered the NFL as an expansion team in 1976 when the league played a 14 game season. Their 1st season was played in the AFC and they were moved to the NFC in their 2nd year In their 43 Years they have had

  • Had a winning record 30% of the time (13 seasons)
  • Won 11 or more games 7% of the time (3 seasons 1999,2002,2005)
  • Won their division 12% of the time (1970,1981, 1999,2002,2005,2007)
  • Made the playoffs 23% of the time (10 seasons)
  • Won at least 1 playoff game 9% of the time (1979,1997,1999,2002)
  • Won the Superbowl 2% (100% of the times they went 2002)

By an odd coincidence the year Tampa Bay won the Superbowl 2002 is the only year that Brady played a full season and failed to win at least 10 or make the playoffs.

In short while their percentage of winning seasons, 11 game seasons and superbowl appearances are about half the rate of the pre-Brady Patriots their rate of division wins, playoff appearances and winning at least one playoff game are almost identical

Given these status one should expect a dramatic improvement to this team with three caveats.

  1. Tom Brady’s stats with the Patriots include games played by him from ages 23-42
  2. All of Brady’s games with Tampa Bay will be played form age 43-45
  3. None of these games will be coached by Bill Belichick

As to the question of how much weight this should be given it’s worth noting that In three seasons Tom Brady has played at age 40 he has:

  • Had a winning record 100% of the time
  • Won at least 12 games 67% of the time (at least 11 100%)
  • Won his division 100% of the time
  • Made the playoffs 100% of the time
  • Won at least 1 playoff game 67% of the time
  • Gone to the Superbowl 67% of the time
  • Won the Superbowl 33% of the time

During those three years Tampa Bay has

  • Had a losing record 100% of the time
  • Missed the playoffs 100% of the time

As for Bill Belichick in the two seasons with New England where he didn’t have Tom Brady at Quarterback he

  • Had a winning record 50% of the time
  • Won at least 12 games 0% of the time
  • Made the playoffs 9% of the time

So given these factors and the level of Tampa Bay at this time and the fact that he’s sharing a division with Drew Brees here is what if Brady signs with the Bucks for three years the expectations game should be.

  • Tampa Bay Should expect to have a winning record 100% of the time
  • Tampa Bay Should expect to win at least 10 games 67% of the time
  • Tampa Bay Should expect to make the playoffs 67% of the time
  • Tampa Bay Should expect to win at least one playoff game 67% of the time
  • They should expect to win their division at least 33% of the time
  • They should make the NFC Championship game at least once

Anything less that this would be in my opinion failure anything more than this would be gravy.

I suspect that Tampa Bay fans will expect better than me and if they aren’t in the NFC championship game by 2021 will be pissed.

The Coronavirus and the Liberty versus saving lives debate

Posted: March 19, 2020 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

The Coronavirus pandemic has ignited online one of the most important debates, where do you draw line between saving lives and protecting freedom and liberty. This is also an internal debate I’ve been struggling with since this whole crisis began and I’ve switched back and forth as things have developed, often too rapidly to keep up with

When the voluntary mass cancellations of sporting events, the closings of schools, and the travel bans from overseas first occurred I believed all of this was an unnecessary overreaction on a major scale.  I maintained that belief for several days.  It wasn’t until I learned the goal behind all of this was to “flatten the curve” that I changed my mind.  Reading this article from The Federalist Papers article Coronavirus Control Measures Aren’t Pointless – Just Slowing Down The Pandemic Could Save Millions of Lives is what changed my mind about all of this

The goal is to “flatten the curve.” Rather than letting the virus quickly rampage through the population and burn itself out fast, the idea is to spread all those infections out over a longer period of time.

Flattening the curve is another way of saying buying more time. Yes, it would potentially prolong the epidemic. But in doing so, public health agencies and the health care infrastructure gain invaluable time to respond to the crisis.

Most importantly, “flattening the curve” provides an opportunity to significantly reduce deaths from COVID-19.

On the steep rise of the epidemic curve, especially when testing capacity is lacking, there is a tremendous burden on health care providers – many of whom will fall ill themselves and be forced to self-isolate, becoming unable to provide care for those in need. At the same time, there is immense pressure placed on health care facilities where demand for patient care will outpace capacity – things like the number of hospital beds, ventilators and so on – for a significant amount of time.

Now that I’m familiar with the topic of flattening the curve I can see that this disruption of normal life is necessary when a society is facing a dangerous contagious disease.  This health crisis introduced me to another new concept which can halt the spread of a communicable disease:

Social distancing requires changes in how people work, live and interact with each other. It may require canceling or avoiding big events, limiting nonessential travel and rescheduling conferences. Traditional classroom instruction may have to move to online delivery – already happening in some colleges and universities, though less easy to do for K-12 schools.

Unfortunately this current threat is a completely new strain of virus, one where no one has a natural immunity.  It is the unknown nature of the threat that convinced me that the closings and cancelings are necessary.

The complete clinical picture with regard to COVID-19 is not fully known. Reported illnesses have ranged from very mild (including some with no reported symptoms) to severe, including illness resulting in death. While information so far suggests that most COVID-19 illness is mild, a reportexternal icon out of China suggests serious illness occurs in 16% of cases. Older people and people of all ages with severe chronic medical conditions — like heart disease, lung disease and diabetes, for example — seem to be at higher risk of developing serious COVID-19 illness.

The CDC Website on COVID-19 contains a wealth of great information on this current threat.  It is the communicable nature of this disease that convinced me that these steps are necessary.

A pandemic is a global outbreak of disease. Pandemics happen when a new virus emerges to infect people and can spread between people sustainably. Because there is little to no pre-existing immunity against the new virus, it spreads worldwide.

The virus that causes COVID-19 is infecting people and spreading easily from person-to-person. Cases have been detected in most countries worldwide and community spread is being detected in a growing number of countries. On March 11, the COVID-19 outbreak was characterized as a pandemic by the WHO

This Newsweek article Newt Gingrich: I Am in Italy Amid the Coronavirus Crisis. America Must Act Now—And Act Big was the final piece of information that changed my mind and convinced me that all of this is necessary.

These steps are not an overreaction. The coronavirus is out of control of in Northern Italy. As of 6 p.m. local/1 p.m. EST on March 10, there were 15,113 total cases in Italy, with 12,839 active cases, 1,016 deaths and 1,258 recoveries. And there were 162 total cases here in Rome.

The hardest-hit region around Milan has had to improvise as its health system has been deeply stressed by the sheer number of patients. In Milan and Brescia, field hospitals have been set up in the fairgrounds as the local hospitals have been drowned in patients.

Because the demand for respirators and intensive care has been beyond any previous planning, doctors have been forced into the kind of triage thinking developed for intense battlefield casualty situations. There are reports that emergency room doctors are allotting respirators to those with higher life expectancy due to the limited equipment in the hardest hit areas of the province. If you are older or have other illnesses, you may simply not be eligible for treatment.

As Libertarian I am 100 percent against the government at any level, but especially the federal government, ordering the mandatory canceling of events, domestic travel bans, and closing private businesses.  A much better solution would be for the government to urge, suggest, and educate that all of this necessary, and it takes place.  A voluntary curtailing of social activity is the only way to preserve our freedom and rights while protecting our health.  The mandatory steps taken by Governor Charlie Baler and the rest are wrong because they are mandated by the government.

Unfortunately a lot of people do not listen to good advise and refuse to stop engaging in behavior that puts others at risk of catching this disease, which could cause the virus to spread uncontrollably.  What do we do about that?  UGH.  That is the question that I’m struggling with the most. Liberty is the freedom to do as you wish as long as you do not harm others.  Spreading the virus to others definitely harms them and could harm society as a whole.  

No 2nd Amendment No Return to Zimbabwe

Posted: March 17, 2020 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Apparently the nation of Zimbabwe twenty years after deciding all those horrible white farmers HAD to go has decided that the country needs white privilege again:

Two decades after President Robert Mugabe wrecked Zimbabwe’s economy by urging black subsistence farmers to violently force white commercial farmers and their workers off their land, his successor has thrown in the towel.

Note the phrasing here. This was apparently a war on white privilege and from that phraseology good and right have lost

Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government has proposed settling all outstanding claims against it by farmers by offering them land.

“The object of the regulations is to provide for the disposal of land to persons entitled to compensation,” Land Minister Perence Shiri said in regulations published in the Government Gazette Friday.

Or to rephrase we will now give white farmers who worked hard to produce the country’s food supply for generations the right to do so again.

The seizures that began in 2000 were ratified by the government, which said they were needed to redress colonial imbalances. A vibrant agricultural industry that exported tobacco and roses and grew most of the food the nation needed collapsed. Periodic food shortages ensued, inflation became the world’s highest and the manufacturing industry was decimated. What was one of Africa’s richest countries became one of its poorest.

Or as Don Suber who linked this story alluded to, despite Mike Bloomberg’s opinion to the contrary there is a lot more to farming than digging a hole and dropping in a seed.

Now while this is the right move on the part of the government if I was a white farmer I’d think long and hard before I returned.

I know the prospect of returning to one’s family farm and the useful life one enjoyed in the past is tempting the question must be asked: What’s to stop the next demagogue who comes along from doing the very same thing again in 2 years, five years and ten years?

Furthermore what’s to stop local people who had been indicted to violence in the past against you from repeating this process on their own, particularly where in western universities the idea that being white is the worst sin a person can commit?

It it was me I’d not subject my family and myself to that risk until and unless a robust 2nd Amendment was passed to the country constitution and powerful stand your ground laws allowing people to defend themselves and their land without fear of government retaliation were in place and even then I’d still think twice.

cue Mr. Scott

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