When I was in college, minimum wage rose from $2/hour to $2.30/hour (except for farmworkers), a 15% increase. During the same period, my Collegetown rent in a three-bedroom apartment rose from $75/month to $90/month, a 20% increase.
Today, minimum wage is $8.75, a 280% increase over minimum wage in 1976. Meanwhile, Olivia's Collegetown rent in a three-bedroom apartment next year will be around $895/month, an 894% increase over my rent in 1976. I rest my case.
Some enterprising young reporter should dig up Ms. Sneed's literary output in the old Cayuga Heights Review. It's clear that her time in Ithaca didn't rub off on her politically, but it's always important to read the early work of key political figures for clues to their intellectual evolution....
"Here's the rule for bargains. 'Do other men, for they would do you.' That's the true business precept."
The very first word he learnt to spell was "gain" and the second (when he got into two syllables), "money.”
"Why, I don't exactly know about perjury, my dear sir," replied the little gentleman. "Harsh word, my dear sir, very harsh word indeed. It's a legal fiction, my dear sir, nothing more."
. . . still his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine.
Men were weighed by their dollars, measures gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars.
“Tradesmen are not the same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same, business commodities are not the same.”
"A man can well afford to be as bold as brass, my good fellow, when he gets gold in exchange!"
"Why, what I may think after dinner," returns Mr. Jobling, "is one thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another thing."
He wore a sprinkling of powder upon his head, as if to make himself look benevolent; but if that were his purpose, he would perhaps have done better to powder his countenance also, for there was something in its very wrinkles, and in his cold restless eye, which seemed to tell of cunning that would announce itself in spite of him.
The man who now confronted Gashford, was a squat, thickset personage, with a low, retreating forehead, a coarse shock head of hair, and eyes so small and near together, that his broken nose alone seemed to prevent their meeting and fusing into one of the usual size.
He had a certain air of being a handsome man—which he was not; and a certain air of being a well-bred man—which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.
It is interesting to contemplate this on the heels of the governor's recent flip-flop on Common Core. It's not working (suddenly) and must be fixed, and he (very suddenly) sympathizes with the Opt Out parents. He wants his retired education commission, which I wrote about when it was first convened, to review the standards and make some recommendations in time for his State of the State.
Now, it's important to recognize that the Common Core State Standards set no requirements for numbers of courses, although they suggest "pathways," and the math standards, although they get into trig and proofs and functions, don't extend into the world of precalculus and calculus. They allow for accelerated pathways, in which advanced middle school students work their way into high school math. But when it comes to advanced coursework in math, the Standards leave it up to districts, saying, "STEM-intending students should be strongly encouraged to take Precalculus and Calculus (and perhaps a computer science course). A student interested in psychology may benefit greatly from a course in discrete mathematics, followed by AP Statistics. A student interested in starting a business after high school could use knowledge and skills gleaned from a course on mathematical decision-making. Mathematically-inclined students can, at this level, double up on courses—a student taking college calculus and college statistics would be well-prepared for almost any postsecondary career."
So requiring higher math of students who are not "STEM-intending" or "mathematically-inclined" is a state decision, unrelated to Common Core. Cameron is right about its connection to a desire to make America more competitive on the world business-and-economics scene, and she's also right that it's not a path for everyone.
Parenthetically, it would be nice if all discussion of Common Core went as science standards discussion did recently in Alabama, where "at public hearings where citizens could voice their concerns, the state required comments to be about specific standards. Critics couldn't simply oppose the whole effort on principle." Imagine that. The result was that Alabama, for the first time ever, is teaching undiluted evolution and even a smidgen of climate change. Back here in NYS, I hear "the standards are not developmentally appropriate," and I ask, "which ones?" and I wait.... Kudos to Alabama.
If Cuomo's commission wants to do something useful, it will pause all discussion of linking standardized test scores to teacher evaluation and will look seriously at limiting numbers of tests. Paul suggests that (since the point of testing for the students is to get kids who need it into AIS) if students get a 3 or 4 in third grade, they don't have to take any test in fourth grade. Then they're retested in fifth grade to make sure they're on track, and don't have to take a test in sixth grade if they are. That's one way. Another is to go to the European model, which used to be our model, of testing three times—say, fourth, eighth, and graduation.
But I like Cameron's idea about offering more choice at the high school, and it doesn't interfere with Common Core in the least. In NYS, we're talking about instituting multiple pathways to graduation, and if we ever figure out how to make that work from school to school, it will help to solve the relevance problem. In the meantime, the state would do well to look at graduation requirements and consider tweaking them once more.
