Every problem...

... has a simple, easy to understand wrong answer.

A classic example is the ballot initiative just cleared for the November ballot here in Oregon.

Basic idea is to base teacher pay on what sort of grades their students get. Naturally it's by Bill Sizemore.

I'm sure there are lots of bad teachers out there. Lord knows I've run into enough of them.

But there are also good teachers struggling with students who won't try. Or that just have problems.

And this is certain to increase standardized testing, Which leads to "teach to the test" which is not a good thing.

There are a *minimum* of three factors in who well a student does:

1. The teacher
2. The student
3. The parents

I wonder how many of the folks that will be proclaiming this measure as a wonderful idea would feel the same about one that penalized parents for kids who don't do their homework? Because that's just as sensible.

This is a "one size fits all" answer applied to a problem that requires judgment and consideration of individual students and teachers.

It's apt to wind up just as bad as the various "zero tolerance" policies schools have implemented for the same sort of reasons. :-(

Yay for geekiness!

Some time back I got an ION USB turntable. Last weekend we set it up on Chrissy's computer (I didn't have room at home and the computer I haul obver to Chrissy's didn't quite get along with it).

Worked great. I now have the 2-record set of the original London cast of Man of La Mancha (the play, not the movie) as a bunch of AU files and MP3 files. And Chrissy and Stacy are digitizing their old records.

Once we're all done with those, I may be willing to do albums for friends.

The EZ Tape & Vinyl converter program ION supplied didn't work worth beans. But Audacity (which they also include) did great.

The MP3 files from the "raw" capture are at least as listenable as the old tape I made many years back used to be. And I kept the AU/AUP files Audacity creates so I can clean up the sound and break the sides (I've got four files currently, one for each side) down into tracks.

Next project is hooking my dual cassette deck to the computer and converting all my cassette tapes. Most of the Filk tapes are long out of print and will need to have an obnoxious screeching tone removed. But I'll get there eventually.

If I was doing this again,, I'd get one of the models of ION USB turntables that comes with a dust cover. Currently, we are using the plastic bag it was in inside the box.

A feature I;'m not using now but that will be nice eventually is the audio oputput cables. There's a switch to set them at "Phono" (for use with stereos that have a "phono" input) of "line" (for use with any free "line level audio" inputs on your stereo, say the CAS or CD inputs)

I also need to get around to using my Sony DVD burner to convert my old Beta tapes to video files and DVDs. Since it will burn direct from video & audio inputs that will work well. It also will act as a video capture device for the computer (a feature I hadn't been aware of when I bought it.