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How school reform preserves the ‘status quo’ — and what real change would …
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If you follow the education policy debate at all, you know that critics are often called “defenders of the status quo” by people pushing market-based school reforms. Here is a piece about why it is actually the reforms that are preserving the status quo — and what real reform would actually look like. It was written by Arthur H. Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. His writing can be accessed at http://www.arthurcamins.com/.
By Arthur H. Camins
A moment after my train pulled to a final stop in Hoboken this morning, another train on my left pulled away provoking the perception that I was rolling forward. Had I not glanced to my right to see the stationary platform I might have been fooled into thinking I was actually moving. So it is with the current education reform strategies — the illusion of movement without looking around at the evidence.
There are two pillars of Department of Education policy: increased numbers of charter schools and consequential use of standards-based assessment for promotion and employment decisions. Rather than citing evidence of causal connections to substantive changes in educational inequity, supporters claim state and local adoption of these reforms as progress and accuse critics of defending the status quo.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has declared many times that he believes in using data. I do too. Several features of that status quo are unarguable. Evidence suggests two conditions that contribute to lower average levels of achievement of poor and lower-middle class students. First, on average the conditions of their lives mean that compared to their more well off peers, they enter and continue through school with fewer supports for learning and greater stress that impedes learning. Parents’ socioeconomic status and educational attainment level — in other words poverty — explain a very substantial portion of the variation in students’ level of achievement and predicts future employment and income. Second, teacher experience and expertise are not equally distributed across schools.
I will argue that the pillars of current education reform are more likely to preserve rather than change the status quo. Further, there are alternative policies that are more likely to mediate educational inequity, creating real rather than illusory movement. None of the pillars of reform will address either of these conditions at scale. Instead, they merely give some students a competitive advantage. Even if reforms redistribute these benefits or slightly alter the size of the advantaged group, they are still essentially maintaining the status quo, creating the illusion of movement, without fundamental change.
Pillar I — Expansion of Charter Schools
Theoretically, charter schools (relatively few in number and often located in poor neighborhoods) are free to attract the best teachers, giving them a competitive advantage to provide an attractive alternative to remaining neighborhood schools. Therefore, by design they do not address the overall effectiveness of the entire profession, nor do they alter the imbalance in the distribution of teachers’ experience or credentials between schools that serve the well off and the poor. In fact, coupled with the intense threat of student assessment-driven firing this policy makes it more difficult for the remaining neighborhood schools to attract effective teachers.
Also by design, charter schools provide choices to some students to escape their local schools without systemically addressing the conditions in the schools or neighborhoods in which students live. There is no evidence to suggest that inter-school competition for students or relaxed regulation yields systemic improvement or innovation. Overall, charter schools are no more effective than the schools they claim to be outperforming. The idea of providing choice, when comparative effectiveness is the arbiter, is just about fairer competition for still limited opportunities, not overall improvement. To the individual parents with an option, picking a school with a strong reputation may seem like forward motion, but government support for a system that still has winners and losers is ineffective policy that just maintains what we have now.
Current policies that fund increasing numbers of charter schools is not a game-changer because there is no evidence that high-quality charters are a scalable strategy. Some argue that they should be part of a solution. However, since they only serve the few based on comparative advantage, this is in the end a cynical idea- a solution for the lucky few. Others argue that they are the solution. These folks see results-driven competition as a means to weed out ineffective schools through closings. This implies continual disruption in the lives of the disadvantaged children they are meant to serve. Rather than forward movement, it is an exacerbation of current conditions. The publicity around the limited number of effective charter schools creates the illusion of improvement for a few, while everything else stands still. Finally, since the evidence is mounting that charter schools are increasing rather than deceasing class and racial segregation, they are supporting not disrupting the status quo.
Pillar II — Consequential use of Standards-Based Assessments
Secretary Duncan warned assembled researchers at the recent convention of the American Educational Researchers Association not to throw the high-stakes testing “baby” out with the misuse of assessment bathwater. He asserted that the dirty water sloshing around consequential testing – cheating, narrowing of curriculum, low-demand assessments, distraction from instructional time — did not come from the testing baby. In response to mounting criticism and resistance, he said that he wants multiple measures of effectiveness. It is hard to be against that. Certainly multiple measures are better than reliance on a single test. Certainly, principals should consider a wide spectrum of evidence-driven factors in hiring, retention and tenure decisions. Maybe, value-added metrics, if their accuracy can be improved, might someday contribute important information. However, the problem is that reformers tenaciously cling to — contrary to the evidence — the notion that precise measurement and related rewards will yield a diminishment in the variation in teacher effectiveness.
No school district or country that has made substantial systemic improvement has done so with a reward system. Nonetheless, Duncan pleaded the case that abandoning consequential use of results from admittedly flawed data would mean a return to the status quo. “Let’s not let the perfect become the enemy of the good,” he said, while attempting to explain away negative unintended consequences with reference to positive ones.
In reality, these reforms preserve rather than challenge the status quo because they do not address the fundamental causes of educational inequity. They preserve the core idea that competition rather than collaboration is the lever for fundamental change. Competition for rewards is only effective for short-term superficial goals while undermining the collaboration necessary for long-term improvement. Since teacher isolation is too often a feature of current school culture, a competitive reward system will only makes this situation worse. Again, we have the illusion of movement while leaving things in place. As many have argued, fostering intrinsic motivation is the only sure strategy for deep sustainable change.
In his AERA speech, Duncan said he wants to make decisions based on evidence. However, evidence will only help if we accurately identify all of the most important features of the problem and only if we use the evidence that we derive from data well. What evidence we use to make decisions is a function of what we value and what questions we ask.
Leaving aside those for whom profiting from an open education market is the primary motivation, current education reformers appear to rest on the value of fairer competition — often referred to as a level playing field. Education reformers love to tell tales of students, teachers and schools who beat the odds. The message is, “See, you can do it too, if we just give you a fair chance and you work hard.” Since they are so powerful, moviemakers and politicians never tire of telling stories about individuals who overcome adversity (poverty, petty bureaucrats, recalcitrant unions, etc.) through grit and dogged determination.
However, it is precisely because they remain persistently exceptional rather that the rule that these stories (the real ones, not the movie versions) are more discouraging rather than encouraging. These stories are meant to be inspiring, but I find them irrelevant and distracting from substantive issues. If we continue the focus on beating the odds in education — even if the odds are fairer — but do not decrease and counterbalance poverty-driven adversity or improve the professional culture of teaching, we will never get substantial sustainable improvement.
Ensuring the education of children in a democracy should not be about odds. We don’t need a level competitive playing field. We need a new game – one that is worth playing because it is engineered to not have winners and losers.
How would a new game address some known root causes of educational inequity? My answer is based on two assumptions. First, income inequality and associated poverty will not disappear soon. All of the calls for college and career readiness, building the innovation economy and training highly skilled technology workers notwithstanding, low-wage service sector jobs in the United States are not going away. Cleaning, landscaping, home health care, shelf stockers and the like are not being replaced by machines. As long as parents still struggle to make a decent living, their children’s lives will be challenging. Therefore, if we are committed to equity, we need to mediate the effects of poverty in other ways. Second, improvement will not be accomplished by pushing educators to “step up our game.”
A focus on improving the collective culture of schools, rather than individual teachers, has far greater potential for substantive progress.
What would that new game look like?
1) Social Supports: Inequity with respect to powerfully influential out-of-school factors such as pre-natal and family health care, quality housing, access to substantial healthy meals, and after-school and summer recreation and educational enrichment should be offset with – yes – government supported programs for all families. Wouldn’t it be great to be first in the world in these areas? That is a race-to-the-top to support and measure! The Promise Neighborhood program is a step in the right direction, but it too is a completion and is vastly underfunded.
2) Integration: Equitable learning and learning to live and function together in a democracy demand that classrooms must reflect the racial, ethnic and socio-economic diversity of our society. This should be prioritized not just in local student assignment plans, but also in housing and zoning programs to increase residential integration.
3) Funding Sufficiency: Two features of current policy and practice must end if we are at all serious about equity: reliance on local property taxes and underfunding of special education. Current federal and state funding for education do not mediate the vast differences in local resources. Put simply, this must change.
4) Universal Pre-School: Thankfully, the President has made a strong case for an investment in high quality pre-school education. The evidence is compelling enough that it should be universally available in the same way as current K-12 education.
5) Rigorous Teacher Development: As many researchers have pointed out, no countries that have made substantial educational gains have alternate route or fast-track programs. Instead they have done so through increased competitiveness for into the teaching profession, fair pay and rigorous well-supported clinical training. Doctors must go through a prescribed program of supervised structured internship and residency. There are well-defined practice-based performance gates they must pass through. Electricians and plumbers practice as apprentices before becoming fully licensed. We should expect no less for the teachers who are responsible to educating our children. There are examples of residency programs and clinical rounds around the country that should be adapted and replicated so that they become the norm. We need a well-planned massive investment in teacher pre-service development and induction.
6) Supportive Professional Culture: A growing body of evidence suggests that a positive professional school culture characterized by high-expectations, collegial learning and responsibility, and supportive non-bureaucratic leadership are collectively more important in determining student outcomes that individual teacher differences. Unless dedicated time in build into every teacher’s workday this will not happen. Lack of time and an emphasis on instructional mechanics have diverted attention from teaching as a deeply intellectual and research-immersed profession and limited teachers’ ability to make daily formative assessment a cornerstone of practice. Changing this will require a substantial investment to hire enough teachers and experienced mentors so that this time becomes available or by increasing teacher pay to lengthen their workday. If we must have school report cards, let’s include these features as measures of school culture.
7) Social and Emotional Learning: The contribution of students’ social and emotional health and growth to their academic learning is getting deserved increased attention. Therefore, another feature worth measuring is the extent to which every classroom in every school consistently and systematically provides these supports. The case for this is strong, not just because it is essential to academic learning, but because it supports the larger goals of education in a healthy society and democracy.
8) Multidimensional Learning: The arts, science and engineering, social studies, physical education, project-based learning, and immersion in current social issues have all been casualties of the reading- and mathematics-centric testing culture. Each is an essential feature of learning. Without them we fail to capture the imagination and promote the creativity of every child. Such, a well-rounded education for every child – not just the wealthy – would be a game changer.
9) Balancing Common Direction and Autonomy: Standards, conceived as fairly broad societal agreements about what every student should know and be able to do, are a necessary counterbalance to everyone being left alone to “do their own thing.” Having worked in and with school systems in New York, Massachusetts, Kentucky and New Jersey, I have seen the results of both under and over prescription.
Too little direction preserves the current diversity of expectations that are grounded in prejudice and support inequity. Over prescription leads to baseless, compliance-minded, creativity-stifling, rigidity. Without a reasonable level of professional and personnel autonomy, no one in any field performs at their best. However, in a democracy debate about standards and their boundaries is healthy. The current debate about the Common Core State Standards has been sidetracked by its connection to high-stakes testing and the nagging perception of lack of transparency and influence of market-driven motives in their development. The Common Core State Standards for reading and mathematics and the new Next Generation Science Standards contain potentially transformative elements for deeper transferable learning, but also debatable features. I do not advocate scrapping them now. Instead, backing off consequential tests, because they impede rather that promote substantive change, would create the necessary space for professional development, experimentation, research and revision.
10) Accountability as Responsibility: In the current climate, accountability has become associated with blame, threat and punishment. A different interpretation of accountability suggests accounting for results – as in explaining causes – and then assuming collective responsibility for improvement. If anyone of the ideas above could work alone it would be simple. But, it is folly to imagine that something as vital, complex and multidimensional as ensuring educational equity will be solved by simple measures. We need to do it all. Therefore, accountability must be shared fairly across local, state and federal levels.
Back in the 1990’s systemic change was the rage. Like engineers, we mapped the education system and it’s interacting parts, its constraints and external influences. However, systemic design solutions soon gave way to impatience and underinvestment. We traded systemic thinking for thinking about symptoms. My morning train was engineered to make actual forward motion as a sub-system within a transportation system within a larger complex society. The same is true with education. It is time to engineer actual educational movement and put aside illusory partial solutions.
Businesses may tap into water rebates
City tries to draw commercial customers into low-usage effort
Businesses, bring on that new low-usage water irrigation system.
Santa Fe officials are working to improve on past efforts to expand the city’s water-efficiency rebate program into the commercial sector.
A slew of proposed changes to a city ordinance would allow officials to work with businesses, a group of water customers that hasn’t really been addressed in the past, city officials say.
“We’ve had great success in the residential area in terms of incentivizing conservation through the various retrofitting and rebate and credit programs and the desire was to figure out a way to do that better on the commercial side,” said City Councilor Peter Ives, a sponsor of the ordinance.
Santa Fe has had success with an augmented water rebate program, started in 2010, that provides cash for water-efficient washing machines and other smaller-scale appliances.
That program conserved 32.5 acre-feet of water in 2010 and 9.04 acre-feet of water in 2011, according to city officials. An acre-foot is equal to about 326,000 gallons.
The rebates are linked to a city plan designed to allow Santa Fe to bank the water saved from the rebates and offer it, for a price, to builders who need to offset water for use in new development. Eventually, builders’ payments are expected to provide funds for new rebates.
The city has historically provided some incentives to commercial water customers, such as rebates for installing a certain percentage of low-flow fixtures, but they haven’t been all that popular.
According to city officials, possible beneficiaries of a new commercial water rebate program could range from a hotel or restaurant that installs air-cooled rather than water-cooled systems, such as for an ice machine, or a laundromat using a reclaimed water system. Schools and governmental entities could also take advantage of the program.
City water conservation manager Laurie Trevizo said individual businesses and other entities could bring ideas to the table that city officials haven’t considered – and she expects and hopes that will happen.
“The commercial rebate program was a way to sort of inspire different types of commercial applications to come up with ways to save water,” Trevizo said. “We’re not experts in every commercial business so we’re relying on people who are in those industries.”
Rebate possibilities listed in the proposed ordinance include exchanging water-cooled for air-cooled equipment, water reclamation systems, cooling tower modifications, large scale irrigation improvements, eliminating water-intensive phases of industrial processes and industrial laundry equipment upgrades or reuse. Landscaping changes may also qualify for a rebate, Trevizo said.
Once the new system and/or equipment has been in place for a year and city officials have documented that water has, indeed, been conserved, the customer gets a one-time rebate applied as credit to their water bill.
The amount of the rebate is based on how much water the participant has saved as well as what the city is paying for water rights. Estimates are still rough but “there is a big financial incentive,” Trevizo said. A device that saves, for example, 100,00 gallons of water would be worth a rebate of around $4,764.
Applicants will need to work with city water officials before and after they install a new system or equipment, and city officials will regularly monitor applicants during the first year to ensure less water is being used.
Applicants must also make sure that at least 80 percent of their fixtures are water-efficient and free of leaks.
“Commercial users get blamed for lots of high water use, but they’re not wasting water, they just happen to have an industry that happens to use a lot of water … this is a way for them to be more efficient at what they’re doing,” Trevizo said.
A city memo written by Trevizo earlier this month says offering a commercial water conservation rebate program will help reduce the city’s overall per capita water consumption levels, “solidifying the City of Santa Fe as a leader in water use and conservation.”
The City Council is scheduled to vote tonight on whether to publish notice of the ordinance. The council will vote on the measure in June.
No silver bullet in search for more water
When it comes to offering solutions to the looming threat of water shortages across the Southwest, there are some very creative ideas out there, like hooking onto icebergs and towing them to Los Angeles or running a pipeline west from the Mississippi River.
Those were some of the more far-out ideas of the 150-plus options submitted for the Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand published in late 2012.
Other options are far less costly and more technically feasible. A number of measures will help produce “new water” that now is lost through misuse, lack of recycling and poor watershed management, officials agree.
The real issue is the low value given to water because it is “ridiculously cheap,” suggests Robert Glennon, University of Arizona law professor, who encourages the nation to abandon its wasteful and extravagant use of water in his book, “Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What We Can Do About it.”
“People are spoiled,” he said. “They pay less for water than they do their cell phone. We need to value and appreciate it for the special thing it is.”
Why, he asks, are California farmers using millions of acre-feet of water to grow alfalfa to ship to China to feed Chinese cows when cities all over the Southwest are wondering how to keep the taps running.
“But it doesn’t have to be cities versus farmers,” Glennon said. “If cities want the water, they need to pay. They need to take care of the rural areas. They could pay farmers to modernize their irrigation systems and stay in farming but free up water for municipalities and industry.”
And rather than come up with grand schemes like icebergs and huge pipelines, he said, “we need to look inward at conservation, reuse and desalination.”
Conservation doesn’t apply just to farmers, he said. There are lots of ways municipalities can save water.
One very simple way is for people turn off lights they’re not using, he said. “It takes water to produce electricity. A 6-volt light on for 12 hours a day takes 6,300 gallons of water. Tell people if they want to save water, turn off lights.”
Cities also need to look at issues like landscaping, water running down the street and other wasteful practices, he said.
For example, in Tucson there’s a cultural emphasis on desert landscaping, said UA professor Thomas Meixner, who serves on the Tucson Citizens Advisory Committee.
There’s peer pressure coupled with a city policy that the more water a household uses, the more per unit they will pay, he explained. Over the years, there’s been a substantial reduction in water use.
Tucson also has been among the leading communities in the nation in reuse of wastewater. Other cities are turning to treatment plants as well to supplement their water supply.
While the idea of reclaiming sewage for drinking water may sound unappealing, treatment plants around the nation and aboard the International Space Station are turning out water with good reviews. Other communities use wastewater to irrigate golf courses and parks, and industries often recycle and recirculate their water.
Meixner also noted that with better management of watershed areas, not only would forests be healthier, fewer trees and undergrowth would mean more water to reach streams that feed into water supplies.
While it’s unknown how much additional water might be realized with better watershed management, he said, one study in northern Arizona indicates it could be 5 percent. “That’s enough to think about.”
The same may be true for the salt cedar that has taken over the banks of the Colorado River.
Another option related to the watershed is weather modification, said Herb Guenther, a water consultant and former director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
Winter cloud seeding is already being used in Utah, he said. It has resulted in 14 to 20 percent more precipitation and increased runoff of 250,000 acre-feet at a low cost of $1.02 per acre-foot.
Yet another option is desalination, not a new subject for Yuma, home to the Yuma Desalting Plant that has sat idle for much of its existence. Desalination is technology now being used by 11,000 plants in 120 countries, Guenther said. And despite its age, the Yuma plant performed beyond expectations during a demonstration run a few years ago.
Jim Cherry, former head of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Yuma Field Office and now a consultant, says there’s a source of water underneath the Yuma area that rivals the storage capacity of both Lake Mead and Lake Powell. That water now is a nuisance to farmers and homeowners in the Yuma Valley because of the high groundwater it creates and has to constantly be pumped to protect crops.
There’s an estimated 49 million acre-feet of groundwater in Yuma Valley, according to the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
“It’s a resource that’s not being closely looked at,” Cherry said. “It’s a little salty but it could be taken down to river levels and used. It would be cheaper than desalting ocean water.”
Concluded Meixner of the dilemma of increased demand for water in the Southwest even as a lingering drought and climate change threaten the supply: “There’s not a silver bullet. We just need to maximize the benefits of water and minimize waste.”
Lawrence flair shines bright through new public mural in Korean ‘city of the …
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Songdo mural
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Sometimes, nothing reminds us what a small world it is quite like a collaborative public art project.
Songdo, South Korea, was built from the ground up and opened for business in 2009. Hailed as the city of the future, it’s an aerotropolis — purposely positioned near Incheon International Airport — where green buildings and sustainable infrastructure are mandatory, and movers and shakers are expected to solidify its spot as a global business hub.
Against the city’s modern, concrete-and-steel-heavy architectural landscape, a shot of color from a brand-new outdoor mural really pops.
If “A City on the Rise” looks similar to something you’d see on the side of a building in Lawrence, there’s a good reason.
Here’s how artists, students and teachers reached halfway around the world from Lawrence to Songdo to make it happen.
Long way from home
Vanessa Vanek grew up in Lawrence, graduated from Kansas University and taught art at Topeka High School before she “went international.”
After three years in Bangkok, she got a job teaching art at Songdo’s Chadwick International School in 2010. The fledgling school in the fledgling city is a sister school to Chadwick School — a prestigious Los Angeles day school with a handful of celebrity alums — and leaders encourage collaboration between the two.
Vanek had an idea.
In 2005, her Topeka High art students collaborated with Lawrence muralist David Loewenstein on the Aaron Douglas Mural in Topeka. Maybe he would do a project in Songdo?
Vanek had no idea whether Loewenstein was still in Lawrence or even still an active muralist (he is). But on a trip back to the States last summer, she asked around. Soon, she and Loewenstein were discussing the idea over coffee.
‘Not just a conversation’
Loewenstein has painted murals in Lawrence, all over the United States and in Northern Ireland, where he collaborated with five schools — some Catholic, some Protestant — on artwork in 2000.
Collaborating to create a mural in South Korea was going to be tricky — especially since Songdo’s governing body wanted to approve the design before Loewenstein would have a chance to visit the site, Songdo Central Park.
Enter modern technology.
Through email and Skype, Loewenstein asked Vanek and her students — plus several from California who flew in to take part in the planning process — to talk about the iconography of Korea, define Songdo’s importance as a green city and physically act out the core values of their school. Vanek sent Loewenstein photos of the students’ gestures, as well as their color studies and sketches of mural designs.
The students’ first video chat with Loewenstein was early, at 7:45 a.m., but 18 students were present and “pumped,” Vanek said.
“They just loved the idea that they were meeting this professional working artist, a mural artist that does this for a living,” she said.
Loewenstein incorporated the students’ ideas and gestures into a sketch, with a crane carrying the Songdo skyline on its wings as the focal point.
“The process is a way of engaging people about issues and issues that concern them, and, often times, heritage or visioning of what they want to see happen in the place that they live,” Loewenstein said. “It’s nice because it’s not just a conversation, it’s all pointed toward the creation of this artwork.”
Handing them a brush
With the design approved, Loewenstein and his assistant Ashley Laird flew to Songdo at the end of April for a week of painting, and that’s when even more people got involved.
Loewenstein, Laird, Vanek and the Chadwick students outlined the mural onto the wall and began to fill it with vivid splashes of yellow, turquoise and blue. Curious passersby from small children to senior citizens stopped to talk, Loewenstein said, and “we usually handed them a brush, if they were willing.”
Songdo dignitaries, developers, students, parents and Chadwick International School, which funded the project, all were represented at the mural’s dedication ceremony April 29, when Loewenstein, Laird and Vanek helped unveil the new work.
“Having come from Lawrence, I’ve seen how art can impact a community in powerful ways,” Vanek said. “The whole idea of this mural at the beginning, for me, was how could we connect our students to the city of Songdo? …This process did become about the community of Songdo.”
Besides its modern architecture, Loewenstein said Songdo is home to wonderful public sculptures and “exquisite” landscaping, but there’s nothing quite like the new mural.
“For sure our little painting stood out as something that looked like it had a little more human touch to it,” Loewenstein said. “We were thrilled that IFEZ (Incheon Free Economic Zone) and the city of Songdo would let us do this there.”
Lawrence Journal-World.
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Speak Out for May 27, 2013
May 27, 2013 11:28AM
The Chicago Board of Education recently voted to close 50 schools. | File photo
Some failing schools have high absentee rates. You can’t teach kids who don’t show up. The problem with failing schools is kids not trying. It’s not the teachers’ fault and it’s not the school building.
In the light of the massive devastation from the Oklahoma tornado disaster, you don’t know from day to day when your life will end so live life to its fullest and practice love.
BJ from Hazel Crest
How can anyone be against expanding background checks for gun purchases? Well, let’s see. We can enact new laws and then tell the people in charge of processing the background checks to delay them or put a few people in place to process a million requests. That would never happen in the United States, would it?
James S. from Crete
I was driving down the street and I saw three landscaping trailers. I got to wondering if the kids have become so lazy that they don’t even cut the grass anymore. I wouldn’t even suggest using one of those reel-type mowers of my past. That would be asking too much these days.
The Link card police are ineligible for the card because we work. Most of us don’t make a living off of having more babies for bigger checks. We get punished for making an honest living.
Now, more than ever, teens and children are raping and sexually molesting other kids. I wonder what the promoters of graphic sex in the media and porn think. How about the lazy parents who drag their new sex partners through their kids lives or have open porn in their homes? What do they think? Not much I’m sure because they never put their kids’ welfare first. What a sad, disgusting statement on our society!
I know the president has nothing to do with gasoline prices, but isn’t it amazing how gas prices seem to drop during an election year?
While walking the annual Oak Park Avenue benches, I noticed the banners on the posts that say “Experience Tinley.” Overgrown grass and weeds, empty storefronts and boarded windows, trash piled on the side of a business, crumbling parking lots and more than a few dead trees. I don’t think that was the experience they had in mind.
Tinley Park
This is to folks who think they are being clever. They say that knives were used in some attacks so knives should be banned, or that the Boston bombers used remote controls from toys so those should be banned, or we should ban cars because they can kill. They are forgetting an important distinction. All of these aforementioned items’ main function has nothing to do with killing. The only thing a gun is meant to do is kill.
Chicago
Kevin from Midlothian says I contend that there isn’t any evidence of God answering prayers. He asks, “What evidence is there that God hasn’t answered any prayers?” He could just as well ask what evidence there is that Zeus or Apollo hasn’t answered any prayers. When someone claims something exists, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. If a person claims that the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot exists, it is up to that person to show others that his claim is true. If he cannot, no one should be expected to believe what he says.
Jeff from Orland Hills
As the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. This is just like pushing an elevator button that has already been pushed being a waste of time. So is voting to repeal Obamacare 37 times. I think Republicans have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars repeating the vote 36 times. How about this, Republicans? Repeal the sequestration and fully fund Head Start, cancer research and Meals on Wheels.
Why is it OK for a person to leash their dog and walk him out of their yard across the street to do his business on my grass and then they are offended when I ask them to not walk their dog on my grass? I want my grass to look as good as everyone else. Is this a new thing that is socially accepted? When you take your dog for a walk you can let him do his business in your yard. Then you can continue the walk for exercise.
Tom from Frankfort
Prior Grand Knight Hank Montoya, of the Knights of Columbus Council 14553 in Oak Lawn, recently visited the San Patricio Council 14992 in Cancun, Mexico. While on vacation there, Montoya exchanged ideas and resources. He presented a check valued at 1,260 pesos on behalf of Council 14553. The San Patricio Council was grateful for the donation, which was given to a local orphanage.
M.J.C.
We are supposed to have the most transparent administration in the history of the United States, according to President Obama, yet this scandal involving the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative groups has been going on for three years. Why wasn’t this reported a year ago? You don’t think they were holding back instead of reporting this years ago? Oh, no, not President Obama. He wouldn’t do something like that.
While I agree with the ban of magazines that can hold up to 30 bullets, I should let you know that I can change a clip in three seconds and my little brother can change a clip in two seconds. So I don’t see what a difference that would make.
If Gov. Pat Quinn gives in to Chicago or Cook County regarding casinos then that would be like giving an arsonist a flamethrower.
Bob from Oak Forest
Funding to help transform town
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OUYEN is receiving a grant of $350,000 for an arts project in the centre of town.
It’s one of five small Victorian towns to benefit from the latest round of funding under the State Government’s Small Town Transformation Program.
Others to receive the $350,000 grants are Avoca, Dookie, Natimuk and Neerim.
Ouyen’s windfall will be spent on a public artwork and public event space in front of the restored Roxy Theatre.
Mallee Up In Lights will create a new outdoor space for public events, framed by a major light installation.
The Regional Arts Victoria website describes the Ouyen project as a “transformation from an uncreative garden into a wonder of lights, sound, public art, and community creativity”.
It includes the building of a major light installation artwork and structure, landscaping and redesign, and functional outdoor room for community meetings and events.
Victorian Arts Minister Heidi Victoria said the program aimed to support small towns to undertake an arts project that had the potential to transform a town and its people.
“There is no doubt that the arts play an important role in Victoria’s communities, both large and small,” she said.
Delivered through Regional Arts Victoria, the program sought creative ideas from Victorian towns with populations of less than 1500 and received 65 submissions.
The Arts Minister congratulated the communities of the five successful towns, saying the projects chosen were “exciting, ambitious and incredibly diverse”.
“They will see artists and communities working together to realise large-scale projects that will deliver strong outcomes for the community, while at the same time, producing truly great art,” she said.
All projects should be completed by end of 2014.
Information on the Small Town Transformation program is available at www.smalltowns.rav.net.au.
Seeking inspiration
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With a major assist from Kenny Irby of the photojournalism program at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, a review of American war photography spanning three centuries informed Kirkland’s ideas on some universal truths.
“When I look at row upon row of people in uniform, instead of seeing a battalion of warriors, I think of them as individuals who have made a choice to be a collective,” Kirkland said. “There are musicians, there are dancers, there are poets, there are football players. There’s fathers and there’s mothers. There’s brothers, sisters, grandfathers and grandmas and children.
“These are human stories. They make sacrifices. And it’s hard to be in the military. It is hard to be be a military spouse. It is hard to be a military kid.”
Kirkland would know.
His earliest memories are rooted in Japan, where his father served during the post-war occupation. He was the third of five kids. He says the first day of class — he attended seven different schools — was always the worst.
“There’s something genetic in our family — whenever we were nervous we would always yawn,” Kirkland said, the memories of his sibling yawners suddenly immediate and vivid. “The yawning was gulping in air to give us oxygen because it was terrifying. You’re brand new, you know no one, you don’t know if they’re smarter than you, you don’t know where you’re going to stand in this, and some military kids can’t deal with it, it’s too hard.”
That is why Patriot Plaza’s glass-and-stone, tablet-installed photo essays will be divided into two themes. The most prominent, “Witness to Mission,” will feature troops in the more familiar contexts of conflict.
But perhaps the most intimate, “Service, Support, Sacrifice,” situated away from the main entrance, zeroes in on less celebrated scenes from military life, the families in the background, the anticipation, the aftermath.
Kirkland, a college student during the Vietnam War, drew a high draft number and never served in the military.
That conflict exacted a profound toll on his family, and even today, Kirkland declines to discuss its consequences. But they are no doubt on his mind, at Patriot Plaza and back in Washington, D.C., where he is also working on a monument to disabled veterans.
The latter “has somehow made this project a little deeper,” Kirkland says, choosing his words carefully, pausing between each subsequent sentence. “As I said earlier, every human being goes through many of the same things. You get born. You get your first tooth. You have your first day of school. You have your first kiss. There’s all these firsts. And you share those with the rest of humanity.
“So as an artist and a thinker, as a participant in a culture that’s trying to find those things that we share …” Kirkland lets the thought hang in midair for so long it creates its own tension. His small audience in the Patterson meeting room waits for the shoe to drop. “Maybe next time I’ll do a piece that’s about the things we don’t share.”
Everyone at the table shares a huge laugh at that one.