Friday, March 31, 2006

Really Bad Advice….

I went to this panel hosted by a non-profit aimed at providing “technical assistance (so you’re here to fix my air conditioner?)” and “capacity building (you build houses not capacity!)” to help organizations perform better and achieve their desired impact (POW!). God, I’m getting really sick of all this jargon.

This panel was on “Board Development” and strategically attracting people to be on your board based on your organizations strategic goals etc… common sense stuff but we got a few helpful tips and tricks. The most galling thing that happened at this event was a comment made by a woman from the Arts and Business Council, a non-profit that seeks to help arts organizations perform better by getting them to perform “more like businesses” she says. The way she said it was so full of self-importance and knowing confidence. I get irritated when people just assume that non-profits need to be more “business-like”-what the fuck does that mean? There are tons of shitty businesses that are poorly-organized, full of dead wood and that don’t generate shareholder or social value-just like many non-profits. They’re such broad categories its almost meaningless to say to be more “businesslike,” but it sounds good-we’ll make you more “businesslike”…what does this mean? Will you make us more Enron-like, Google-like or Apple-like? And when people say that shit, its usually some stereotyped notion of what they think a business is like and its usually just pivoting off a stereotyped of notion what they think a non-profit is not (efficient, ruthless, effective). It’s a nice word to throw around and it gets people really excited-yes, all we need to do to fix non-profits is get them to be more like “businesses.” The private sector has its own set of issues and in reality the two sectors can learn a lot from each other, not just in one direction.

So she raises her hand and mentions a study she has recently seen that and says that arts organizations really need to get better at fundraising. Her evidence? The study says that arts organizations make up this much of the non-profit sector (she puts her hand wide apart, nice and precise -real “business-like”) and then says that they only generate “this much” of the fundraising (she then narrows her hands for dramatic effect). Lets ignore the numerous logical leaps in her implication that this disparity must be the result of some fundraising failure and not other factors; what said next really took the cake: the reason that Universities and hospitals in particular raise much more than arts organizations must be because that they have give-or-get policies for their Boards and arts organizations often do not. This was like a flashback to my LSAT teaching days at Kaplan-it was such a leap in logic I almost broke my neck looking back at her in disbelief. Thankfully, the people in attendance didn’t let her get away with her it either and pointed out the numerous other possible explanations for the disparity and that hospitals and universities were very different (and typically LARGER) organizations with larger donor pools (past patients and alumni). She looked pretty sheepish under all the critiques.

I was pretty irritated and disturbed and it took me a good part of the day to figure out why. I mean, it was just a poorly thought out argument, was I so hateful and pompous that I was angry that she just said something dumb? Partially yes, but then I connected her comments to her assertion that arts orgs need to be more “business-like.” What really pissed me off was that there was this person who didn’t seem to have the critical thinking/analytical skills to identify obvious holes in a faulty claim working for an organization that claims to have the expertise to help non-profits be more “business-like.” How much damage is done to good people trying to do good work when they’re told by some ”expert” to implement some one-size-fits all policy based on incredibly poor interpretation of data (“you clearly need a give-or get policy-that’s why you’re underperforming…”)?

In the end, its people like her that makes me think that any moron can just throw some buzz words out there, make a business card and call themselves a “non-profit consultant,” its fucking scary.

Note to self: 7ARTS will never seek consulting from this group.




Monday, March 27, 2006

Fucking Asians...

People of color UNITE!

unh...

This was posted by one of my classmates today on the Wagner Listserv:

On Saturday night (March 18th) I was studying on the sixth floor lounge of Bobst, over Washington Square Park with my close friend _________. My phone rang on vibrate and I immediately answered (whispering) and told my father that I could not talk. As soon as I put the phone down an Asian man 35-40 years of age approached me from the back
and said to me quietly "I didn't know Black people were so stupid and ignorant to use a phone in the library."

Frustrating

I posted this on a Wagner listserv today after someone posted a recent article from the Times about schools slashing curriculum. I get frustrated when I see stuff like this because it shows how out-of-wack our incentive structure in education. Lets improve kids's reading ability by decreasing the amount of time in Science, Social Studies and Art. Because no reading happens in those subjects right? But if you're an administrator, teacher what-have-you you're responding to a very short-term measure and its going to affect your decision-making. It seems counter-intutive, but more time spent on drilling reading techniques and skills will yield only so much after awhile-what you really have to do is take that shit for a reading test-drive and content area texts give kids a chance to do that. Not to mention the joy you deprive students of when you limit those subjects.

Kim Marshall calls test-prep junk food, he also said something else interesting, that good readers simply have more "
miles on the odomoter", they have the love of reading to put in those out-of-school hours and over the summer to make the jump in reading ability in those critical early years. A diversity of reading materials is more likely to allow that to happen.

I guess this is all an extension of that library grant I wrote last year-that a child should be immersed in literacy all throughout the school day but not just by the obvious and regressive strategy of extending reading block twice as much ("we'll be twice as effective with twice as many cooks in this small kitchen" unh...diminishing marginal returns...) unfortunately that seems to be the twisted logic that has taken hold. But by integrating literacy across diverse content areas and subject areas and reinforcing reading all day, a smart program is reinforcing literacy when you're reading primary texts in Social Studies, science reports and artist biographies, not just getting rid of them. I don't know, the research I did seemed to point to it all making so much sense, how a sound education can and
should be an engaging one to be most effective.

Am I missing something?

"The intense focus on the two basic skills is a sea change in American instructional practice, with many schools that once offered rich curriculums now systematically trimming courses like social studies, science and art"-NY Times

The damn shame in all of this is that there is a significant amount of research that demonstrates that student immersion in these content areas (Science, Social Studies and the Arts), asides from simply making school less dreary for kids (a worthy goal), forces them to engage challenging non-fiction texts. One result of this is that students acquire new vocabulary
incidentally rather than through drilling. Vocabulary acquisition, especially at a young age (through 4th grade), has a huge impact on a child's development of reading skills but a child can only learn so many words in a year through memorization. After that, marginal gains in vocabulary acquisition come from repeated incidental contact with words in context, typically in content-rich texts, the type of texts kids don't often see in their literacy block whether its 90 or 120 minutes.

So for short-term gain on these instruments we focus on what Kim Marshall calls the "junk food" of test prep but what we're cutting are the resources and curriculum that, when strategically used, provide students enduring gains in literacy skills.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

boogie down productions....

I started a new job in February...in the Bronx. One of two boroughs I know nothing about (Staten Island being the other). Its fascinating borough, I get to travel to different schools across the Bronx so today I walked smack through Arthur Ave, an old school Italian enclave smack in the middle of the Latino Bronx. It was so bizzare, this serene calm little Italian neighborhood of restaurants, cafes and tree-lined streets smack in the middle of the Bronx. I hear the food is good-I just walked around though and took some pics.














































Two things I find facsinating about the Bronx is that its so hilly (maybe because they're on the mainland and aren't an island) and the architecture throughout the borough. Some of the row houses and old buildings are gorgeous.















Powerful

I heard this today on a podcast and I almost cried:

So for me to say look how horrible what they did to my son certainly I'm entitled to revenge well there are people who can say the same thing because there are people over there in Iraq who lost their sons and daughters in that prison and there are a 100,000 people in Iraq dead and think of all the families there that think they're entitled to revenge.
I don't think revenge is justified under any circumstances.
Revenge is an endless cycle and it has to stop somewhere and it stops with me.

-Michael Berg, father of Nick Berg, the US contractor beheaded on video in Iraq


Wednesday, March 22, 2006

The Universal Language of Sports


Japan is sending PlayStations...



Its been a minute since I posted for those of you religiously checking.

Anyone watching the WBC notice how racialized the commentary has been? I mean, its one thing to talk about how "disciplined" and "reserved" the Japanese team is but I think Joe Morgan took the cake last night when he said that the Japanese hitting approach was a direct result of their physical stature (oh those cute little yellow men). And Jayson Stark wrote that:

"The Japanese, on the other hand, often play the game like the men of science they are."

And that the Cubans "play baseball with a flair that separates them from every other country in the world" because of their African roots.