Long Train Running

I know my posts mostly have no point. That's the kind of joint this is. I don't premeditate, I gloat and I vent and I ridicule. This is going to be a rambly inane post. Get a cup of coffee or turn the computer off.

How it started...
I started this blog once upon a time to talk a lot about music. I talk about music in about half of my posts. I get reactions from folks about it from time to time and that's cool and all but I really treat this as kind of a journal for how things are sounding to me. A friend of mine (yes, you and you know it and I don't care) asked me why I still wanted to own cd's when if you hear a track you like, you can buy it off iTunes. Well, I never hear the kind of jazz I want except maybe streaming WBGO, so there's that. Plus---if you buy one track, you've got....one new song to dig. How about if you got, like, 6 0r 7 and heard something really cool? And also because, I really do think that I regard my interest in music as something very different than most people I know. I'm trying to learn about it by listening to it and applying what little theory I was taught in more than 10 years of music instruction. I learned to make an instrument work---not to create music. And that's what I want to understand now. Finally, I still have all of my LP's even though I don't even own a turntable any more---that should tell you something about my attachment to music on hard media--with liner notes, pictures...

Then another thing came up...
So we're talking about learning, let's talk about this No Child Left Behind sh*t ( do you guys like how one day I'l be all cursing and everything and then other days I'll be all coy about it? Its quirky, huh?). We are entering the first of two weeks of Maryland School Assessments for for 3 - 8th graders. Eight year olds and older students, will spend half days on four days over the two weeks filling in bubbles on forms. Haley's school began prepping just after the holiday break. Things really ramped up over the last couple of weeks with certain activities being eliminated entirely in favor of enhancing test-taking skills.

Let me describe the demographics of the school population. Montgomery County is one of the most affluent counties in the country. This county claims the highest proportion of residents holding doctoral degrees of any in the country. 88% of registered voters are Democrats. There is lots of money for public education and there is a lot of community support for learning. The school catchment district for my childrens' school sits at the high end of the county distribution although it is certainly not THE most extremely wealthy or educated district.

If, in a school such as ours, where kids come to school rested, ready to learn and motivated, this kind of effort and manipulation of testing conditions is required to meet standards---what is really going on here? And I haven't even told you yet that every school in our cluster is opening 20 minutes earlier than usual and providing no cost hot breakfasts for students. Or the daily "pep rallies", or the super long recesses and light curriculum afternoons on test days.

I can only imagine how educators must feel about this. I'm offended, and sorry, for them. It is with this long preamble that I direct you attention to a story in last Sunday's Washington Post about the rather questionable approach to targetting preparation efforts of one middle school principal. Essentially, the principal used last year's MSA result to identify where her school had not shown the expected improvement, and focussed extra preparation in those segments of the student body---allegedly, some were pulled from usual academic instruction, away from what the rest of their class was doing. Will anyone be surprised to find out that the students were African-American, Hispanic, FLES students?

There has been a lot of condemnation of the act. I feel sorry for the principal. I believe she's been relieved of her duties. The standards are ridiculous, the assessments are ridiculous and they measure very little learning, they measure test-taking skills. Anyway---I'm sorry for Haley about the MSA's. She's stressed, even though these assessments are not-student specific; in aggregate the data are used to measure the school's performance. I'm sorry for her tiny 24-year old teacher who has to climb on top of cabinets to drape all of her learning tools and samples with blank paper so no one has any environmental cues.

But since we're here...
I mean, since we're all chatting and everything, you should hear about my knitting. I remember reading something about web pages and blogs and making them exciting and the author said---"sure, people might actually want to read about the sweater you knit from Peruvian wool..." and I thought---well, duh...knitting is the perfect thing to blog about. I'm very excited about the Koigu twin rib socks that I cast on today. They're for me because soon it will be too warm for anyone to care about hand knit socks for me.

And you know what else...
Drew has a bad case of spring fever. Poor boy. Meanwhile in Chicago, apparently, its miserable. I know this because on one of my favorite knitting blogs, Franklin said so today. You really should check out Franklin's post; it was HILARIOUS. Today was a lovely day in DC once your feet got off the ground---its that sloggy, muddy, slushy messy mess stuff underfoot and we still have two big blocks of frozen tundra at the top our driveway. It'll be there till May or so given how shaded it is.

And now the music
Because that's why I'm here. I just get distracted; shoot me. Today in the mail, the Amazon fairy left for me Wynton Marsalis' new disc, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary. He's been making the talk show rounds and rumor has it he's scheduled to appear on Bill Maher---should be great talk there... I've played the disc twice today but haven't really been able to listen to it. I've heard the first track enough to know its haunting and will stay with me; its the title track and features really mournful melody sung by Jennifer Sanon over a slow-grooving rhythm. I was immediately struck by how reminiscent the music is to Stan Kenton's "Lonesome Train" from New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm (1952). For your listening pleasure....