Can We Hear From “Over Half” of the Student Body That Needs Special Intervention?
A better way to create a community for humans.
I live in a town controlled by a hegemony, similar to a corporate subsidiary of the State. The leaders follow the State program guidelines, and why not? The best way to get money from the State is to do the State’s bidding and it’s easy too! Just follow the plan and don’t color outside the lines.
But is that the best way to create a community for humans?
I am multitasking right now. I committed to reviewing a paper as slave labor for Humanities and Social Science Communications. HSSC is a German-based for-profit corporation having a similar policy for paying essential workers as does the Boothbay, Maine-based, non-profit, Botanical Gardens.
Both corporations use volunteer labor as essential service providers. HSSC approached me in the same style and manner as a non-profit to do a review for the impressive organization. Only later did I realize it is a for-profit organization with two primary shareholders, an international publishing company, and an international real estate company. HSSC is a peer review site and so reviews are an essential service in their primary business model.
This new form of slave labor, taking the world by storm, is volunteer slave labor, excepting those who are mandated to work for non-profits for food stamps, under former and would-be-future Maine Governor Paul LePage’s “work for welfare” laws. We are on the slippery slope with welfare mandates legalizing slave labor for the non-profit sector so how far is Maine away from legalizing volunteer labor for the for-profit sector, as appears to be the case in Germany? As it currently stands, the line that separates the non-profit from the for-profit sector is a no man’s land if public transparency is the measure.
While I acknowledge my status as unpaid essential labor, It was also my free choice to review the paper. It was a decision that happened spontaneously, or one might say chaotically, at least to surface appearances. I believe there is order and purpose hidden in the chaos, not understood by our present point of focus but emergent from another organizing principle. I place my faith in the goodwill of hidden organizing principles.
Nonetheless, it does bother me that the financial beneficiaries of my essential services, offered freely, are the shareholders of a large publishing firm and a large real estate agency with holdings across Europe and the USA.
The study, however, is of interest, but as an unpublished work, I am not supposed to talk about it. I can say that the abstract of the paper did not prepare me for how deeply I would have to get into statistical science. I am in over my head but I made a commitment. There are many mathematical terms that I have to look up to understand what is being talked about. It takes me back to the day when I read quantum theory. The quantum philosophers repeatedly made the point that to understand what is under discussion, two languages are required, mathematical language and general language.
The questions that I have to consider do not seem difficult, but I have reactions outside the parameters of review, which Is the way I usually feel whenever I answer polling questions- Yes- but there is this and that which I also consider but it’s not part of the questionnaire.
My individual response is “overdispersed” to use the language of statistical analysis. The overdispersed are the parts that the convergences eliminate in search of the norm wherein all chains equilibrize. I usually feel that polling questions are designed to get all to think about an issue in a similar way. Statistical research can easily transit over the line of the informative to the manipulative. Reading about how statistical analysis is organized makes one more conscientious of the assets and liabilities of statistics to the general body of publicly available information. Automated communications are being used more often these days and work in a similar way. The other day I was given several choices to describe why I was contacting support. None of them were correct but I could not move forward without selecting one incorrect choice.
Will the science self-reflect and devise a probability wave to determine at what point the agenda-driven manipulations defeat the informative function of data analysis?
The paper is written primarily in mathematical language. I am thinking it would be more useful to a layperson such as myself if it were explained in both mathematical language and general language, I can’t help but project how the statistical process might be used. The first thought is it is useful within the real estate industry, but it also has a higher purpose.
To what degree does smoothing over the overdispersed information defeat the end game? In times like these, the overdispersed is more significant than it used to be. When more people have a lifestyle that permits greater space to hear one’s own thoughts that is when overdispersal from the targeted mean becomes greater. At some point do the overdispersed responses create a new collective field that creates new chains - or trains- of thought, that if unaccounted for will detract from the accuracy of predictive statistical science?
Statistics is used to track collective phenomena, but the individuals in the collective have their own unique set of criteria that the statistics cannot track, However, the most accurate statistical projection has to be able to account for the effect of internal phenomena without knowing the characteristics of the phenomena.
The shrink factor (or Gelman factor) shrinks the chains to where they “have `forgotten' their initial values, and the output from all chains is indistinguishable.” I visualize all the phenomena taking place in the individual sphere as “initial values that are overdispersed”, and that they are the within-chain, while the targeted values (collectively shared values) are the between-chain variances.
Diagnostic: Gelman and Rubin's MCMC Convergence Diagnostic
Description
Gelman and Rubin (1992) proposed a general approach to monitoring convergence of MCMC output in which \(m > 1\) parallel chains are updated with initial values that are overdispersed relative to each target distribution, which must be normally distributed. Convergence is diagnosed when the chains have `forgotten' their initial values, and the output from all chains is indistinguishable. The
Gelman.Diagnosticfunction makes a comparison of within-chain and between-chain variances and is similar to a classical analysis of variance. A large deviation between these two variances indicates non-convergence.
Talking about a large deviation between within-chain and between-chain variances, I just read an article about education in the Boothbay Middle Schools. It says that over half the students need special intervention. That is a case of non-convergence between what is going on within-chain- or within the student, as I interpret it, and the programs to which the student is supposed to adjust. Special intervention is the rule, not the exception to the rule, which begs the question, is the school system trying to force the student into a direction that just doesn’t fit the nature of the average student? What is going on? Why not listen to the students in this case just as the stories that are written about the proposed fifty million dollar school claim to do?
I interject that when the JECD paid 79000.00 of public money to hire a consulting firm located in New York, the consulting firm used ERSI Data compilation to create the report and ERSI data compilation relies heavily on government compiled data that one can find publicly accessible on government websites.
Data compilation software is available on a subscription basis which is infinitely less expensive than the fee paid to the consulting firm. Why did the JECD make such a costly choice rather than using the subscription service to do the work themselves or perhaps hire local talent and create local jobs in the process of doing so? It must have been because the JECD did not know how to use the data compiling technology but there are probably others in the community who do. However, when I approached the JECD about a museum concept, I was informed that the JECD does not engage with those that it designates as “outside of its peer group”- which is clearly delimited by the amount of wealth the group or individual has or controls, as apparent by whom the JECD includes in its peer group.
Kurr said education is a constant game of catch-up: When work on one educational foundation after another is successful, it means catching teachers and administrators up on how to use those tools.
“Technology doesn't change education, it's what you do with technology that changes education. You can have all the tech in the world that you want, but if you don't have the teachers who ... know how to use it and are now using it for 21st century learning, you're not getting any bang for your buck there … All that professional development? That's where our bang for our buck is, teaching our teachers the updated practices. And they're hungry for it, absolutely hungry for it.”Draft budget $11.2M Spending concerns dominate first workshop
To find that local talent would have required research work on the behalf of the JECD in identifying the quality and whereabouts of local talent which is what a winning working economic development resource would do, in my opinion.- but the working class, where work capabilities are found is outside of the JECD’s peer group.
Surely we have expertise in how to use data-compiling technology in this town. Before advancing on further escalated expenses advocated by some, why not invest in data compiling software and use local talent to create our own database unique to this peninsula, starting with data from the students, over half of them need “intervention” according to the school system.
In statistical science, the student misfits represent the “overdistributed” data that does not equalize into the norm- the norm being determined by the needs of the state’s economic development agenda as clearly said in The Industrial Partnerships Act of 2013.
So now the Peninsula is in a similar position as we were when the JECD spent $79000.00 on a Town plan, just so the JECD could say it had one. Our community is being marketed a new expenditure that makes a 79000.00 disposable Town Plan look like a petty cash expenditure in the form of a fifty-million-dollar school system.
§3304. Industry partnerships
D. The Department of Education shall:
(4) Coordinate career education initiatives in middle and secondary schools, career and technical education programs and adult education;
[PL 2013, c. 368, Pt. FFFFF, §1 (NEW).]
SECTION HISTORYPL 2013, c. 368, Pt. FFFFF, §1 (NEW). PL 2017, c. 110, §§31, 32 (AMD). (emphasis by author)
The article titled Draft budget $11.2M says there have already been investments in technology that the teachers do not know how to use- so rule out all traditional technology found in schools because the teachers know how to use that. Is the technology that the teachers need to be taught how to use industrial technology not normally a part of public education? There is very little background information provided in the public articles so it is a guessing game. It sounds like the school is investing money in expensive assets but not in educating the educators on how to use whatever technology assets are being discussed but not identified in the articles in the paper.
Have significant changes been instituted in our educational system since the enactment of the Industrial Partnerships Act? If so is there a correspondence between the changes made to our educational systems and a student body in which over half of the students need special intervention?
The recent article CSD, community finish final visioning workshop is about workshops sponsored by The Boothbay-Boothbay Harbor Community School District building exploratory committee and architects from Lavallee Brensinger to develop the fifty million dollar school on the Boothbay Peninsula in which the local community was invited to participate.
Over 30 teachers, students, parents, and community members held three meetings conducted by David Stephen of New Vista Designs and Kim Carter of QED Foundation. I am guessing that did not include more than half of the student body that “needs intervention”.
The QED Foundation provides a hint as to how the advocates of the fifty million dollar school may be planning to fund their vision, but the same resource could be used to fund a state industrial training center off the peninsula in a location that does not have a challenged water supply and is centrally located to communities of a variety of economic status. With a caucus on the Boothbay Peninsula acting aggressively to claim this resource for the Peninsula, other communities need to be stepping up and offering alternatives.
The grander vision of the school as an industrial training center for the State’s targeted sector is codified into the Industrial Partnerships Act and includes industry clusters that will locate around the State’s industrial training centers, a development which the Boothbay Peninsula’s water supply cannot sustain. It is questionable whether the Peninsula’s water supply can sustain the fifty million dollar school or industrial training center.
The majority of students needing “special intervention” is a case wherein statistical development talent could create statistical chains for the information that over-disperses the target, by interviewing the over half of the student body that needs “special intervention”. Since the “special intervention” process is already in place, adding statistical analysis of the results is economical.
Since the Peninsula has so few students it’s a doable target sector. How creatively interesting is it to make a new set of chains out of the overdispersed information that is usually forgotten in the convergence of the targeted chains? Very! And relevant in these times when the workforces are speaking their own voices.
Since over half the students require special intervention that means they have to be treated individually to see why they are not converging with the so-called norm, that cannot really be the natural norm for this group of students if over half the students need special intervention. The interventionist must already work with the misfits individually and so it follows naturally to identify the qualities within the student that do not fit the program’s “norm”. Then it could be statistically determined if there are convergences between the non-fitting chains (individual students) to discover from within the non-adapting majority of the student body if there is a collective sensibility, and even better to conceptualize alternate educational approaches to that codified in the Industrial Partnerships Act, which I submit is a better direction for a water-challenged rural community on an isolated peninsula. A peninsula is naturally suited to be an alternative culture. Why should a great opportunity like that be allowed to be appropriated by the megalopolis?
Over 50% of the students in need of special intervention share something in common with today’s workforces who do not want to return to corporate headquarters. Why not adapt the system to the users instead of requiring the students, or the workers to adapt to the system? After creating the new chains from the “overdistributed” data of the errant students it could be compiled to see if there is convergence with the resigning workforces- and a new model emerges! Measure it for its critical mass.