John Jensen

British Columbia, like many provinces, has a series of standardized exams that all students at various levels take.  For those approaching graduation, there are a series of exams, some mandatory, for students in grades 10, 11, and 12 for subjects like English, Science, Mathematics, French, Social Studies, and many more. For younger students, those in grades 4 and 7, there are a series of exams called the Foundation Skills Assessment, or FSA.  They were started by the previous government in the 1990s to replace another set of exams called the PLAP which were being applied somewhat sporadically.  (For a quick history of provincial educational testing in BC, see here.) When the FSAs first began, external groups used the province's Freedom of Information Act provisions to obtain results for every school in the province.  One organization, the Fraser Institute, combined this with census and other data to produce what it claims are accurate summaries of individual school achievement for every school in the province. The British Columbia Teacher's Federation (BCTF), the provincial teacher's union, has always been against these exams, and this dislike only intensified when the results were used by the Fraser Institute to produce simple rankings that claimed to holistically summarize all the achievements of individual schools. This opposition recently intensified when BCTF members voted to refuse to adminster the next set of FSAs, slated to commence in February 2009:

"Teachers are concerned that your government is relying more and more on a discredited American-style testing agenda instead of putting resources into the classroom to help individual students."

Since I have a child in grade 4 who will be taking these exams, I thought I would look more closely into this. In my mind, there are two main issues:

1) Whether the FSAs are a good idea or not.

2) Whether teachers have the right to refuse to administer them.

Let's talk about both of them in turn. From reviewing the literature from both sides (I discounted that from the government and that from the BCTF, since both clearly have axes to grind), it's clear that the issue is not so much whether the tests have any value, it's how much value they have and thus how much weight should be placed on their results. The BCTF and other critics are perfectly right to say that it is impossible to claim that School A is wholly better than School B simply on the basis of the responses to two written tests, written in one afternoon, from a small portion of the schools' populations. However, only a fool would try to make such a claim.  Of course there is much more to school and student achievement than just the scores on these tests.  When it comes time for report cards, I am sure no teacher in the province gives the slightest thought as to how a student did on the FSA. However, I do expect that School Boards will look at the results and ask questions like "Hmm.  It looks like grade 4 aboriginal girls in our schools did significantly worse in writing than those in School District X, even though that district is quite similar to ours in terms of demographics.  Maybe there is something to learn over there, let's find out." In short, results like these should serve largely as a source of new questions as everyone involved -- students, teachers, administrators, and politicians -- all try to give our children the best education possible.  They should not serve as anything approaching a be-all and end-all measure of a school's success, and judging from the anecdotal history I mentioned earlier, it never has been within the school administration establishment.  FSAs are and should be one tool in a drawer, that's all. The BCTF, it seems to me, are secretly really angry at a third party, the Fraser Institute, who chooses to take the data, mix and match it one way, and then produce results it claims are holistic and valid.  I understand that.  But it's a separate issue. It can't be helped if some organization misuses government data, or if individuals naively accept it.  Heck, maybe I or the BCTF should process the numbers a different way to demonstrate, for example, that the altitude of a school above sea level, or the number of sunny days it usually enjoys in February, is correlated with FSA success. As for whether or not the teachers have the right to refuse to administer the exam, I cannot see how it is possible to claim that they do.  Provincial exams of various kinds have been administered in British Columbia for over a hundred years.  The FSAs and its predecessors have been around for thirty years or so.  Teachers in hundreds of jurisdictions across the world administer similar tests.  If the government was mandating, say, a return to corporal punishment, or requiring that students be classroom-bound for 12 hours per day, I think the teachers would have a professional leg to stand on.  But not in this instance. Some are claiming that the BCTF executive is just looking for a hot-button issue they can use to spend advertising money on in the lead-up to our scheduled provincial election in May.  That would allow them in effect to skirt the third-party election advertising gag rule, which prevents them from explictly spending a lot of money on "Don't Vote Liberal" advertising.  While I am sure that this is by no means the main reason the BCTF is pursuing this issue now, I can't imagine that it did not play in some way in the decision.  We'll see in the next few months.

While everyone in the western world is either distraught or at least worried about the current state of the world's economy, it appears that China is taking advantage of the situation, to the degree it can, to pursue some of its longer-term goals. On the economic front, China is acting as a "white knight" to rescue smaller mining companies, hammered by the collapse of commodity prices and the frozen credit markets.

A Chinese firm this week offered to buy control of struggling Australian zinc miner Perilya, and the Chinese are also pursuing another zinc miner, Oz Minerals, which is scrambling to refinance its debt. And mining giant Rio Tinto, saddled with around $30 billion in debt, is trying to find buyers for some of its assets.

Meanwhile, for the first time in 600 years, the Chinese Navy will engage in long-range naval combat missions, patrolling for pirates off the Somali coast.  The Americans, in response, politely call for the Chinese to resume the military communications the two countries enjoyed until the Chinese cancelled them in October as retaliation for the U.S. selling (more) arms to Taiwan.

[from FT Alphaville] This presentation, by Richard Koo of the Nomura Research Institute, offers the best summary I have seen so far of the similarities between Japan's deflationary economy of the 1990s versus what is happening in North America and Asia right now. UPDATE -- here is essentially the same presentation in prose form.

Reading about an upcoming auction of drawings of an imagined Nazi bomber found in the Reich Chancellery at the end of World War II made me think about the inexorable progression of software and hardware. It worked like this:

The glider would be released from a larger aircraft. Guided by a Luftwaffe pilot inside, the dart would dive towards the ground carrying its 1,000kg bomb. At the last moment, the pilot would release the bomb and inflate a huge balloon attached to the craft.

So, it's basically a human-steered cruise missile.  Now that we have hardware and software that, for this particular purpose, can steer a bomb to a target, we don't need to attempt to put pilots into contraptions like these. Similarly, we now send amazing robots to Mars, and monitoring spacecraft around other planets.  As long as our computer and robotic engineering continues to move forward, and our space travel fuel strategies (chemical rockets) stay the same, the likelihood of manned missions to Mars continues to shrink.  We don't need to send people there.  It would be really neat if we did, but the benefits in terms of knowledge gained would be outweighed by the costs of getting them there and back safely.

• The market research and hot dog industries appear to be remarkably similar.
• The ecofont is useful, but not as useful as printing on both sides of the page.
• The 2009 economic forecast for B.C. is, so far, not as bad as I thought it would be (but read the comments for interesting and differing anecdotes).
• The first indication I have seen that some regulators in the U.S. are actually taking action with regard to outrageous bonuses proffered to Wall Street executives, in this case, a proposed bonus of $10m to Merrill Lynch's CEO.  Interested bystanders will recall that Merrill Lynch lost billions this year and was snatched from the jaws of doom at the very last second by Bank of America a month or so ago.  Also see what the infamous London Banker has to say about this, especially in comparison to what the dictatorships are doing.

Frances Bula, former long-time Vancouver Sun reporter, now editor at Vancouver Magazine, has a great blog that talks mostly about City politics.  Today she links to Lee Bacchus' new blog, Splinter In Your Eye, which seems to be building a great visual portrait of the changes Vancouver is going through. All the images are from either Bernie Lyon, a Vancouver illustrator, and Lee Bacchus, a Vancouver photographer/writer. There's only a few days' worth posted but already I can see they are really capturing elements of the city. Check it out, before it changes even more due to the influx of Americans buying second homes in downtown condos.

is pretty funny so far.

Someone at Northvancouverpolitics.com posted a link to a paper by an SFU economics professor, Herb Grubel, a well-known right-winger (even by economist standards).  It's worth a read, but backs up its wide-ranging assertions with very little data. Anyways, it mentions China's economy as being mercantilist in nature.  The term is one that I have a vague sense of seeing more regularly than I used to, so I thought I would check out Google Trends to see.

[[posterous-content:]]

It turns out my feeling was wrong, but check out these interesting annual spikes.  Every September and October the number of people searching for the word "mercantilism" goes up.  My theory is that it's all those university students in International Economics 101 reading about one of the introductory concepts of such classes.  I remember it was in mine.

So, Mr. Harper got, it appears, a no-conditions prorogation from the Governor-General. A few points:

• It seems to me that most or all of the coalition's energy was coming from their visceral hatred of Stephen Harper, the politican.  Harper has always played a take-no-prisoners game and they saw an opportunity to give him his come-uppance.
• Since both Dion and Layton are out standing on a ledge right now, it will be difficult to talk them down from it before January 27th, when the 2009 budget will be presented to Parliament.
• However, the same self-interested obsession of the Bloc that the Tories decried so strenuously during the last few days will also allow them to rather ably shift position during the break.  The Tories will presumably concentrate on obtaining some votes there to carry them over the top in terms of votes in January.
• Therefore, look for the Tories to make a big show of not making a big show for the next few weeks, as they work hard on preparing the next budget.  Once its outlines are ready, they will present it to the media, probably shortly after the New Year.  That's when the media blitz will start.
• If the Tories win their confidence vote, they will have vanquished Dion and the Liberals for some time (these days, that means 6-12 months).  If they don't, I'll bet Harper will ask for another election and will probably get one.
• I'm a bit concerned about the apparent nature of the prorogation -- no strings attached.  Given that the country currently has what appears to be a semi-permanent large Bloc of untouchables, minority governments, or very bare majority governments, are likely going to be in our future for some time.  If that is the case I don't like that the Governor-General acceded so easily to a request to prorogue Parliament so easily.  If the precedent stands we could conceivably in the future have prime ministers regularly ask to prorogue Parliament to dodge confidence votes.  To say that would be bad for Canadian democracy is an understatement.
• Also, if we assume that minority governments are more likely to be the exception, not the rule, in the years ahead, then all parties need leaders who know better how to get along and work with others.  Harper is not such a leader.  His caucus and party now has glaring proof and should hold him accountable to his promises of better communication and less petty partisanship.  If he can't do it, he'll be out.

UPDATE -- it appears I'm not alone here:

A constitutional expert says he's worried the Governor General's decision to suspend Parliament sets a "very dangerous" precedent that allows future prime ministers to use the same manoeuvre to avert their own government's demise.