Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 34.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:31 PM for 9h 05m 58s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 6.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1879, Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

 Rory Linnane reports Despite setbacks in elections, organizers behind school board recall efforts say it’s ‘just the beginning’:

By one metric, an explosive two years of recall attempts against school board members in multiple Wisconsin districts have failed: None of the 36 targeted members were unseated by special elections.

But recall organizers suggest that metric does not concern them. They’re thinking bigger.

Already, many school board members have resigned after being threatened with recalls. Others are feeling burned out by the relentless vitriol. And the coalitions that sprung up to organize the recalls are not letting up; they’re adapting.

….

For as many community members as signed on to recalls in Wisconsin, more of them resisted. Some agreed with recall organizers on the issues but felt recalls were unduly expensive and inappropriate. Many others stood by their school board members’ decisions for being in line with public health guidance and the best available research on the emerging virus.

Voters also said they worried about efforts to erase the role of racism from U.S. history, seeing the approach as weakening students’ education and dangerous for the future. They also worried the groundswell to narrow curricula and limit access to books would further marginalize students who already lack representation.

Further, while the leaders of school board recall elections in Wisconsin came from the communities they organized in, out-of-state influences have been abundant.

While organizers insist on the grassroots nature of their efforts, others have questioned the role of outside funders and networks, depicting the local groups as being closer to “Astroturf” — a term referring to groups whose roots are not in fact local but made to appear that way by outside organizers.

Linnane reports on these concerns euphemistically; it’s book-banning and closet-confining that these extreme populists have in mind. See A Frenzy of Book Banning and Conservative school board wins may deliver chilling effect on racial equity efforts.

Kleefisch’s political action committee made a Whitewater candidate endorsement in April, and later spent much of the fall fighting (but losing) a destructive battle in the Mequon-Thiensville School District. Kleefisch will cause as much trouble as she feels she needs to cause to advance her own gubernatorial candidacy. She has, however, nothing to offer Whitewater except a horror-reel of distractions, exaggerations, and prevarications.

But if these extreme populists are destructive, then what of the conventional reply to them? It has been wasteful and tame. No one improves education for the many with astroturf for the few. No one advances education by pretending what they did is not what they did. No one solves educational problems by implementing a policy of ‘positivity’ on social media.

Those who have received a formal education should show, through their actions each day, a respect for inquiry and evidence. It does not require any formal schooling — whether high school, undergraduate, graduate, or professional — merely to assert that all is well.

As one can guess, this libertarian blogger would not have been a supporter of Roosevelt’s New Deal economics. I am, however, much an admirer of the candor with which the New Dealers described the economic conditions they faced. They were right to describe the Depression fully. In their stark accounts, they showed respect for their fellow Americans. See What the New Dealers Got Right – What Whitewater’s Local Notables Got Wrong. For this, one sees, and rightly appreciates, Roosevelt’s greatness.

Whitewater will overcome her educational challenges not through good appearances but rather through good deeds.

Good deeds, however, often (and for this community do) require firm positions and hard choices. Whitewater deserves nothing less.

For Berlin Zoo animals, the tastiest Christmas leftovers are the trees:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 34.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:30 PM for 9h 05m 13s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 14.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1916, Russian mystic and advisor to the Tsar Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin is murdered by a loyalist group led by Prince Felix Yusupov. His frozen, partially-trussed body was discovered in a Moscow river three days later.  

Rasputin’s life later formed the basis of a historically inaccurate, but catchy, tune by Boney M. (“Ra ra Rasputin Lover of the Russian queen/There was a cat that really was gone/Ra ra Rasputin/Russia’s greatest love machine/It was a shame how he carried on.” Caution: earworm in 3, 2, 1…) 

 Of four perspectives on the Whitewater School District, one starts sensibly with the condition of the district now.  A single report will not capture all, but a carefully-crafted report may capture enough.)  The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s district report cards are a sound discussion starter.  They assess through multiple academic and socio-economic measures, having been developed over time, without a pecuniary motivation.

(Whitewater has had a problem for years with the use of poorly-sourced data. The US News and World Report school rankings touted by the district administration this year are both new at the lower grade levels and commercially-motivated.  Some years ago, a group of development men cherry-picked ACT scores in Whitewater, when that standardized test was not universally required, to make the district look better than its overall performance. See What’s Being Done is More than Just a (Sketchy) Number, Whitewater’s ACT Scores and Participation Rates, The Better, Reasoned Approach on ACT Scores, and Whitewater’s ACT Scores.)

Discussion of the state’s district report cards should be a carefully-considered starting point for academic performance. It’s not something to skip over. One would expect a physician to be able to interpret an x-ray, or a lawyer to understand a judicial opinion. There might, of course, be varying professional interpretations of x-rays or judicial decisions, but at the least, a professional should be taking them into account.

The same is true with faculty, principals, administrators, and superintendents: if they’ll not start with consideration of fundamental reports, they’ll end well only by chance. And no one, at least no one sensible, hires a professional to end well merely by chance.

Scientists Find Fossil of ‘Biggest Bug That Ever Lived’:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 29.  Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 4:29 PM for 9h 04m 32s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 23.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1812, the USS Constitution, under the command of Captain William Bainbridge, captures HMS Java off the coast of Brazil after a three-hour battle.

 There have been, and will be, intense contests for school boards across America in the coming year. Wisconsin had a nationally-noted battle over a school board recall in November, and upcoming spring elections in parts of the state are likely to be as acrimonious.  See Mequon-Thiensville School District Rejects Recall and How Mequon-Thiensville Residents Saved Their Schools.

(Notably, Mequon-Thiensville is a successful, affluent district where the conflict was between kinds of conservatives. The more traditional conservatives found the populist ones objectionable, and the community sided decisively in favor of the traditionalists. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction report cards for Mequon-Thiensville show how different it is from Whitewater in socio-economic status and academic accomplishment. Successful, vibrant communities find conservative populism — Trumpism, truly — a dead end.)

Before whatever battles ahead begin, it’s worth distinguishing between four perspectives on education: the district as it is now, a school board race as it unfolds, the district after a spring election, and education through lifelong learning apart from formal schooling within the district.

If one simply thinks about the district, nothing is more significant than the condition of that institution now. For many students, they are well into their tenure — how has it gone for them?

If one thinks about the district during a campaign, then one will see that no candidate, no board member, no principal, and no superintendent will matter half so much as a single student. Likewise, no claim, no press release, no photograph will matter half so much as a single student. In a properly-ordered community, this should, and so would, be plain. And so, and so, one would think less about candidates, so to speak, and more about the principles and positions of a candidacy. These candidates and board members are not going to spend all day in our schools; our children are going to spend all day in our schools. How are they to be taught, and how are they to be treated?

If one thinks about the district’s condition after a campaign, there will be ongoing work requiring a student-directed faculty, principals, and superintendent. Ongoing work is expensive, and this administration (here sometimes called ‘Central Office’) has, to put it mildly, done itself no favors in laying the groundwork for ongoing community support. On the contrary, efforts at boosterism and promotion of a popular image have made long-term prospects worse.

Note well: administrators come and go; shake a tree and a few more will fall out. Our community’s children and their parents, however, are not similarly replaceable (nor should they be seen that way). They did not arrive yesterday, and they will not be leaving tomorrow. Whitewater is not a job for these students and parents — it’s home.

Finally, the fourth perspective is the most important of all: learning begins before and endures after formal education. Bluntly stated: ‘WUSD supporters’ matter less than supporters of education, supporters of lifelong learning. Those who think more about an institution than what it teaches — substantively and ethically — value education too cheaply.

1930s – Views of Los Angeles in color [60fps, Remastered] w/added sound: