Pass the Waffles, Please

Washington state, home of Bigfoot and Glen the Lake Boren Carp, has imposed a condition on our school kids. In order to qualify as a edgicated person they have to pass the WASL – (Washington Assessment of Student Learning), apparently pronounced “waffle.” This test “measures student learning of the state’s academic standards” and I want to say those are some pretty good standards. For example the Washington State DOT thinks an 18% error rate is just dandy for issuing $49 tickets to drivers on the new bridge. New math.

Have you come face to face with a recent HS grad at Wendy’s? If the cash register tells them your change is 63 cents it takes them 10 minutes to figure out how many quarters that is. So maybe the Superintendent of Public Instruction has a point. This brings up the title of the test. If we’re testing student learning doesn’t that mean we’re testing how the teachers are doing? To me this is really bass ackwards.

First we should make a point of adequately funding the schools and paying teachers so better educated people from other states will come and train our kids. Because it’s hard to teach gooder if half your mind is focused on food stamps and rent and the other half is focused on inadequate school supplies and heat in the danged classroom.

See? I could pass the WASL because I was able to use two forms of the word "adequate" correctly in the same paragraph. Pretty smart.

Parents are really annoyed with the WASL. They want little Billy to graduate so they can pay some large university to baby sit him for the next four years. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that the baby sitting won’t last very long if Billy can’t read. But if Billy can’t pass the WASL he won’t graduate.

So what have parents done to help the little tyke pass? Sue the state to abolish the test. And little Billy ends up living with them because he can’t find a job. But the parents feel righteous because they voted “NO” on every proposal to improve schools and their little genius has a high school diploma. Bravo.

OK, is there a point here? I don’t know. Oh, yeah, in Civics Class we learned that in order for society to work members have to participate in funding. We call it taxes. Sure, it can be annoying but so is the dentist. If you never go to the dentist you may not be able to chew your food at some point. And if you don’t pay taxes you don’t get roads, schools, police, and congress.

And that’s about where it all starts to fall apart. If I could draw of picture of how this really works I’d be a famous artist because it’s very abstract and four dimensional. So to keep my head from exploding I need focus on plans for a rapid transit station on the shimmering shores of Lake Boren.

My waffle question to you is: If a train leaves Boston going west at 24 mph toward Cincinnati and another train leaves Winnemucca going east at 36 mph toward Cleveland will they ever be in Ohio at the same time? Why? Who wants to go to Ohio? When do we leave?

For extra credit: What if a train left Seattle at 72 mph headed for Oklahoma City with the Sonics’ basketball team? Well what about it?!? Would it pass through Ohio? Could we catch it and make them come back? Film at 11. Oh, and show your work.

Al

Early Results:

Option 1 – “Blog and email you the text of each new post.”

This is probably going to win, along with Option 4. I started posting my blog and it still needs a few tweaks. For one thing each new topic will have to be a new post. But on the blog it’ll read about the same. The newest post is at the top and then as you read down each paragraph is an earlier post.

Option 2 – “Blog and email just announcements of new posts.”

This one discriminates against those who are using dialup and other “last century” technology so, even though it has some favor it’s not going to win.

Option 3 – “Forget the whole blog thing.”

This is an obvious red herring. Once you get the blog bug its here to stay and I just gave this one because technically it’s possible. But nobody voted for it anyway.

Option 4 – “Do whatever I feel like and let you know.”

As mentioned above I’ll be doing the blog and keeping everyone informed by email. In essence the whole thing becomes Option 5.

Options for Report

Polling My Readers:

The World Wide Web or Internet as we call it has a very interesting component that I have not yet exploited. It’s called the “blog.” I read blogs because they’re interesting to me. The interest comes from the fact that I want to know what’s going on with the people who write them.

So my question to you, my reader, is whether you would like to see the Lake Boren Rapid Transit Report in a blog. And I’ll get to that question after a few more words:
First of all: once when you publish a blog it can get to more readers than the writer knows about. So people who actually live in Newcastle may read it and wonder how I could be so wrong.
My three rules are:
1. Accuracy – optional.
2. Plagiarism – I’m not above it.
3. Frequency – whenever I’m not busy with other time wasting junk.

One or two of these rules might offend some people. And I’m kind of sensitive so I’d be annoyed if I got flamed because of some fun I poke. If I publish a blog I’d need to have a small section near the top that states the rules and the essential point of the blog.

My essential point is that Newcastle is a pretend city, created secretly by Bellevue, as a buffer from Renton. And as a pretend city Newcastle has this grandiose pretend plan for a major Puget Sound Area Transit Center on the shores of Lake Boren. Lake Boren is a pretend lake that would be classified as a pond in most places. But the people who live in Newcastle probably think it’s the best lake west of the Pecos.

In fact Newcastle and Lake Boren do exist and the people who live there probably take themselves seriously. So my words might annoy them. My hope is nobody gets too annoyed. Or I might apply rule number one to them. Pusillanimous Prevaricators!

My biggest issue right now is that everyone who gets these random reports seems to enjoy them (or they are exceedingly polite) and I don’t want to take that away. If I switch to a blog format it means readers may have to go to the blog URL to read the reports.

Option: I could put up a blog but still email the text reports to you. Which would give you the option of reading the email or the blog.
Other option: Send an email to you each time I post a blog update so you can go to the URL to read it.
Other other option: Forget the whole blog thing.
The key primary advantage of a blog (at least the kind I would use) is that I could include links to pertinent web sites, photos (my own, of course), and more corroborating information. In other words I could provide more proof that I’m not making this stuff up. Well not all of it anyway.

So I’d like you to tell me what to do:

Option 1 – Blog and email you the text of each new post.

Option 2 – Blog and email just announcements of new posts.

Option 3 – Forget the whole blog thing.

Option 4 – Do whatever I feel like and let you know.

Voting will close shortly after January 2 when everyone gets back to normal. But don’t worry, I’ll probably count votes that come in after that. My main concern is that I’d really like to know what you want.

I’m not going to stop the Lake Boren Rapid Transit Report. I just want to improve the distribution. So please let me know your thoughts. Maybe there’s an Option 5 that I haven’t thought of. Really, there’s something I may not have thought of. Amazing.

Hoping to hear from you,
Al