Monthly Archives: May 2015

5 Great Pieces of Advice on How to be Better

Leave a reply

cdar

So much of being more effective has to do with being more rational, in the literal sense of the world.

Being rational is very hard to do. Cognitive biases and emotional walls abound.

CFAR, the Center for Applied Rationality, has a solid checklist that can be used to get better.

Some of their recommendations, as well as my thoughts, below.

1) Dealing with Cognitive Pain

Cognitive pain is caused by thoughts that hurt. Thoughts could hurt because a colleague is disagrees with a strong belief of yours; you realize a relationship is not what you though it was; you realize your career is not where you want it – or any of a variety of other painful thoughts.

CFAR has good advice on the mindsets required to deal with cognitive pain:

Screen Shot 2015-05-29 at 10.01.16 PM

2) Fighting to Keep Your Mind Open

It is very, very difficult to explore all potential options and evaluate them without prejudice.

CFAR points to some key issues:

Screen Shot 2015-05-29 at 10.06.40 PM

3) Moving From Arguing to Testing

In so many cases, we don’t know enough to come to conclusions. Rather than debate, we must test:

Screen Shot 2015-05-29 at 10.09.22 PM

4) Quantifying Over Time 

One of my favorite hacks is the 10/10/10 rule: consider how something will make you feel in ten days, ten months, and ten years.

CFAR expands on this:

Screen Shot 2015-05-29 at 10.13.41 PM

5) Admitting Environment Matters

When you’re trying to change, you can’t just say: tomorrow it will be different. You need to reconstruct you environment to bring about the change.

CFAR explains:

Screen Shot 2015-05-29 at 10.14.53 PM

In Sum 

The road to be our best selves, of course, runs straight through our minds.

If we can make our minds better, we can better.

Personally, I’m focusing on facing cognitive pain whenever it occurs.

While difficult to do, to date it has made my life better.

Many, Many Sentences to Ponder this Weekend

Leave a reply

ponder

My browser tabs were overflowing with good stuff. Sorry to being so late in posting it all. Happy reading.

1.Goldilocks and charter school authorizing

“It seems the battle lines in the war of best authorizing practices have been drawn.”

2. Who should profit when business makes money off government R&D?

“Taxpayers have a large, unacknowledged role in the nation’s innovation. They deserve some credit. And perhaps more, if that’s what it would take to power innovation’s future.”

3. Family structure and poverty

“A much stronger—indeed one of the strongest—correlate of upward mobility is family structure.”

4. Bill Gates on the most likely existential threat for humanity

“Gates’s model showed that a Spanish flu–like disease unleashed on the modern world would kill more than 33 million people in 250 days.”

5. Be part of the tribe and then speak to the tribe

“That research has consistently found that the most effective campaigners are like the target population: either from the same neighborhood, or sharing racial or ethnic identity.”

6. Far left economic agenda

They want to raise taxes on the wealthy by hiking rates and converting deductions (which are most valuable for the rich) into credits (which are worth the same to everybody). They want tougher enforcement on Wall Street. They want to end too big to fail by imposing a capital surcharge on large, risky firms, and to create a financial transactions tax to discourage short-term trading. They want subsidized child care, smaller prison populations, immigration reform, and Medicare for all

7. Singer on everything

“We have strong hierarchical tendencies. We like to think that there is always someone below us, and for many people, having power over others seems, regrettably, to reaffirm their sense of self-importance and thus to make them feel good. That may be a psychic need that finds an outlet in racism. For some people, it also finds an outlet in the abuse of animals. In particular, jobs in factory farms and poultry processing plants are poorly paid, high pressure and low status. That may be why, year after year, undercover investigators in factory farms and slaughterhouses continue to find evidence of the most atrocious abuse, like workers bashing pigs with steel pipes, or using live chickens as footballs.”

8. 4.0 Schools new launch cohort

Now, in Cohort 11, we welcome Great Teachers Academy, a platform to enable teachers to quickly launch their own low-cost micro schools. By creating a platform that teachers can then customize and build upon, GTA is making it easier for teachers to build unique schools that families are excited to attend.

9. Teachers improvement correlated with working conditions

“On average, teachers working in schools at the 75th percentile of professional environment ratings improved 38% more than teachers in schools at the 25th percentile after ten years.”

10. Problems of coordination 

“Yet we face an exasperating gap between the health outcomes we can theoretically achieve and those we actually are achieving.”

Erica Mariola, New Orleans KIPP Teacher, Takes Home the Fishman

1 Reply

erica

The Fishman Prize is an annual award that honors the nation’s most amazing public school teachers who work with low-income families.

It is given by TNTP. Four teachers are awarded the Prize each year.

The Prize consists of a $25,000 award, a seat at the Fishman Prize Summer Residency, and lifetime participation in the Fishman Prize Alumni Program.

This year, the prize was given to .005 of applicants.

___

Erica Mariola, a teacher at KIPP East Community Primary, is one of the four Fishman winners.

On average, students enter Erica’s class in the 20th percentile in math nationally. After a year with Erica, they rank in the 90th percentile. This year, they’re on track to be among the top kindergarten classes in New Orleans in learning growth.

Previously, Erica conducted research in a neuroscience lab for four years and lived and worked in Cameroon as a surrogate mother for orphaned primates.

Afterwards, she worked in development for Teach For America before joining the program herself, ultimately teaching for six years as an elementary special education teacher in Atlanta Public Schools before making the move to New Orleans as a founding teacher at KIPP East Community Primary.

As a part of her school’s Louisiana Autism Spectrum and Related Disabilities (LASARD) team, Erica also works closely with students with severe academic and behavioral needs.

__

I would have loved to interview Erica for this post, but she just found out about the award this morning, and I didn’t want to get out-scooped by the journalists who should be descending on her classroom as we speak.

So I’ll end on this: to date, there have been 16 Fishman prize winners.

3 of them have been New Orleans teachers.

That’s a 19% win rate for a city that serves that about .001% of public school students in the country.

New Orleans is incredibly lucky to have teachers such as Erica doing amazing work for children across the city.

We are Tired of Waiting

Leave a reply

SRC

The title of this post is taken from the words of four public schools parents in Philadelphia.

They recently wrote these words in an op-ed.

Additional excerpts from their op-ed are below. The piece is so powerful I had trouble cutting out any parts:

As parents, nothing is more important to us than great schools for our kids…

Yet year after year, tens of thousands of Philadelphia families are forced to send their kids to schools that are, by any measure, failing students.

And year after year, families in our communities are told to just wait for the next “fix” that will – no kidding, this time for real – make these schools great. Wait until we have funding. Wait until we fix this law or that law. Wait until we have a new plan.

We are tired of waiting.

We demand better educational opportunities in Philadelphia – now.

And that’s why we lent our voices to a campaign called “No More Waiting” (nomorewaiting.org).

The evidence shows that right now, good charter schools are the best answer. Why? Charter schools are working for kids in Philadelphia. Just ask the families of the 65,000 students who have chosen to enroll in charters, or the 22,000 more students who are on waiting lists…

According to a recent study by experts from Stanford University, African American students in poverty who attended charters are more likely to get ahead in reading and math. In other words, better results today – no waiting.

These are the facts. Charters represent the best opportunity for tens of thousands of African American and Hispanic kids to get a great education right now. Yet most rhetoric about charter schools in the city ignores these facts.

Instead, critics profess concern about our families while telling us that charters – the best way to get results today – are a luxury we just can’t afford. What they’re really saying hasn’t changed much for decades. To tens of thousands of families all over Philadelphia, the critics of charters are saying: Hold up. Wait until we develop another plan to fix public schools.

Two months ago, the School Reform Commission had an opportunity to provide immediate help for thousands of children and families in underperforming schools. The SRC reviewed 40 applications for new charters, many of which were submitted by operators who are already running some of the best schools in the city. Yet the SRC rejected the vast majority of them – telling tens of thousands of families to keep playing the waiting game.

We cannot wait any longer. Our children need better schools right now.

We agree that public schools need more funding, and that they deserve a plan that resolves the funding crisis that batters our schools year after year. But we refuse to accept the status quo while politicians haggle over how much funding is enough and who gets to spend it. Those are priorities for adults.

Our priorities are our children and their future. Kids in schools that continue to struggle don’t have any more time to waste. Each year they fall further and further behind.

While politicians fight over a funding solution, let’s spend on schools that are working, schools that are getting results for our children.

Right now.

To restate a common theme of this blog:

1) Right now, across the country, there are great schools that want to serve more students.

2) Right now, across the country, there are families living in poverty that want to attend these schools.

3) Right now, local governments across the country, which are entrusted with providing educational opportunities to children, make it illegal for these schools to serve these families.

Elon Musk and Other Rich Parents are Finally Beginning to Subsidize Education Innovation Rather than Simply Purchase Status

Leave a reply

musk

I previously wrote about how wealthy families negatively impact the rest of the world when they spend a lot of money on education status rather than education innovation.

When this occurs, wealthy families purchase zero-sum goods (status) instead of subsidizing goods with positive externalities (innovative education models).

Yesterday, I wrote about how scaling charters and vouchers to the suburbs could be one way to increase both quality-options and innovation to a diverse array of kids.

Today, I read this: Elon Musk created a small school for the children of employees of Space-X.

With Alt-School and Musk School, we’re beginning to see wealthy families investing in new education models.

If these models work, they will overtime benefit all children.

Will these models work? Who knows. But one way to begin to find out is to experiment on some rich children.

Yes, you can get grumpy and say that these private schools (right now) only serve wealthy students, but in the same breath please do say how you support vouchers programs that are designed to give all students access to these schools.

Big picture, I’d much rather have wealthy people building innovative private schools than sending their children to stagnant schools of status.

Who Will Lead the Suburban Charter School Network Movement?

4 Replies

suburbs

I grew up in Valparaiso, IN. It’s a town of about 30,000 people that’s located 55 miles outside of Chicago.

The public schools I attended were decent but not exceptional. The quality of the schools paled into comparison to the best charter schools I visit today. I would have benefited from increased choice and quality in public schooling in my town. The same is probably true for the millions of students who currently attend public schools in the suburbs.

___

Right now, the best charter schools are often launched and scaled in cities. CREDO data shows that urban charters are the highest performing part of the sector.

What would it take in order for this to change? What would it take for there to be 20-30 national class CMOs serving suburban students?

I’m not sure, but in considering charter growth, I often think about the entrepreneur profile of a given network.

To date, the high-performing urban charter movement has largely been driven by mission driven entrepreneurs who are drawn to serving students in poverty.

My guess is that the entrepreneurial profile will look different in the suburbs:

1. For-profit Entrepreneurs

While mission driven entrepreneurs might be more compelled to work with students in poverty, for-profit entrepreneurs might simply be drawn to a market opportunity. Chains such as Sylvan Learning provide some insight into how its possible to scale in suburban environments.

2. School Could be So Much Better Entrepreneurs 

Organizations such as Alt School, Acton Academy, and Basis seem to be born out of the recognition that schools that serve middle and upper class children can be significantly improved.

The entrepreneurs launching these schools seem to be driven more by building world class, innovative educational institutions than by serving students in poverty.

___

Foundations and non-profit venture funds should think about how to further support and incentivize high-quality entrepreneurs that fit into these profiles.

___

My main worry is that the regulatory hurdles to scaling in the suburbs will be very difficult to overcome. Each suburban public school district is a fiefdom of its own, and given the small size of many of these districts, even one new charter school could severely impact a district’s budget.

As such, perhaps vouchers will be ultimately be a more politically viable option for school choice in the suburbs. Given the better off student population (less worries of creaming), the educational culture of suburbs (private schools are already accepted), and I’m guessing voting patterns that are more conservative than big cities – vouchers could be the way forward.

So maybe the title of this post is asking the wrong question.

Rather, perhaps we should be asking: what political entrepreneurs will scale vouchers across suburban communities?

Diversity in Capital: The Importance of Governmental and Philanthropic Investing

Leave a reply

infinite resource

I’m currently reading and .

Both are worth reading, and both cover the importance of diverse sources of capital.

__

In the Infinite Resource, Ramez Naam attributes the rise of the West, in part, to Europe’s decentralized governmental capital markets.

Christopher Columbus, for example, pitched his voyage to numerous governments before Spain made its investment.

Zheng He, the great admiral whose 300 ships explored Southeast Asia and the Middle East, had his ships burned in 1424. The Emperor of the Ming Dynasty declared that there was nothing to be learned from the outside world.

In Europe, an entrepreneur could pitch multiple governments. In China, there was only one ruler; if he rejected your request, there were no alternative sources of capital.

__

Norman Borlaug probably saved more lives than any other human ever to exist. His development of new strains of wheat most likely prevented massive famine. Without these new wheat strains, we would have risked entering Malthusian conditions in the 1970s, with population growth outstripping food.

Norman’s research was funded by the Mexican government and the Rockefeller Foundation.

__

The private market has clearly delivered immense good in the form of technological innovation.

But government and philanthropic capital are important for a few reasons:

1. Governments and philanthropists can make longer bets as they are not constrained by returning profits in the short-term.

2. Governments and philanthropists can invest in areas where profits will never be high despite the opportunity for social returns (in most cases because the target consumer is in poverty).

3. Governments and philanthropists create less fragility in capital availability. For numerous reasons, private markets can lock up or go haywire; having other sources of capital is sort of an insurance mechanism against market failures.

___

Unfortunately, government and philanthropy – because they are not subject to market discipline – can often be poor investors.

Over the past ten years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with great people in an effort to increase the efficacy and efficiency of governmental and philanthropic spending in education.

I feel like we’ve made a lot of progress; of course, there is still a long way to go.

This entry was posted in Capital on by .