Don't worry, your kids are safe

We went car-camping in Arlington, Vermont this past weekend, and somehow the topic of child abductions came up. It was the first time I'd heard the urban legend about a child being nearly abducted at Disney World (and the first time I'd heard an urban legend recounted as "this happened to a friend of mine...").

I knew that child abductions are waaaaay down the list of things I should worry about; the kinds of abductions that make headlines are very rare. I was curious to see what I should be worried about as a parent of two kids (who are 5 and 7 years old), and some google searching led me to the CDC Health Data for All Ages Child and Adolescent Mortality by cause.

And the answer is: I'd have to be pretty darn unlucky for my white, northeastern kids to get killed by anything in the next few years. Here's the data from 2002-2004; look at the 5-9 year old column:

Only 251 kids aged 5-9 died per year in the Northeast between 2002 and 2004. That's out of a total of 2.3 million kids that old in the Northeast (that 2.3 million number's not in the above table, you'd have to go to the website and play with the live version to see).

4 per year were murdered. Twice as many kids aged 5-9 died of heart disease in that time period! And only 10 TOTAL non-hispanic white, Northeastern kids died of asthma (go figure, I woulda thought that number would be much higher).

It's tragic when any child dies, but I find these cold, hard statistics comforting. On average, the statistics say that about 1 child aged 1-17 will die from ANY cause in Amherst each year. Our kids are much safer than we are; mortality rates for adults (even 18-34 year old adults) are much higher than for kids.

Three years ago today...

Three years ago today I took the Oath of Citizenship in Boston.

I was born in Melbourne, Australia, but moved to the U.S. when I was a wee lad. My mum had applied for citizenship for me a couple of times when I was growing up, but the INS managed to lose the paperwork and/or lose track of us (we moved around a lot when I was growing up).

I liked being an "alien"-- it was just a random interesting fact about me, and besides not being able to vote, it didn't really affect my life much.

Then sometime in the 90's they made green cards expire once a decade or so. Up until that time, my green card was cute-- it had a picture of 5-year-old me on it. I hate dealing with bureaucratic nonsense, and figured I'd have less to deal with in the long run if I went ahead and became a citizen. Here's what the process was like for a white, professional, spotlessly-clean criminal record, been-living-here-for-25-years college graduate:

I sent in my citizenship application in 1996. Then waited.

After six months, I sent in the "hey, do you still have my paperwork?" form.

Then I waited.

After a year, I sent in the "hey, are you processing my application?" form again.

After a while I get a letter saying that I have to send in fingerprints. So, off to the local police station, get fingerprinted, get them to sign the appropriate paperwork, and send that in.

A couple months later-- get told that the fingerprints aren't good enough, I have to have them done again. Ok.... back to the local police office, they do it again, send them in.

Then more waiting. I was happy to get a letter in the mail telling me to show up at the INS office next Wednesday-- even though that meant a three hour round trip to the nearest immigration office. After waiting an hour for my name to be called, I spend about 10 minutes taking the citizenship exam and talking with a bureaucrat. I think the bureaucrat was an immigrant, too-- his english was a little hard to understand.

Now comes an interesting twist-- while waiting some more, we move from Wisconsin to Massachusetts. I fill out the form that tells them that I'm moving and send that in. Then send in a "hey, are you still processing my application?" form again (even though I'd never actually gotten a response to any of those, I figured it couldn't hurt).

I really hoped the move wouldn't mean I'd have to start the process all over again (I'd been waiting three years at this point). And Yay! I didn't! In January of 2004 I get a message from the BOSTON immigration office that I must drive to Boston (a 4 hour round trip...) and get my fingerprints taken AGAIN. Next Thursday. At 10:30AM.

Yes Sir, whatever you say, Sir. And I guess the third time was the charm-- because Lo and Behold, a Miracle! A short 4 months later I get a letter telling me to come to Boston in a few weeks for my naturalization ceremony.

And that's how I became a citizen on Flag Day, June 14, 2004.

Class size: priorities

With Robin in kindergarten at Wildwood and school budgets getting squeezed, I've put my skeptic hat on and have started looking at our schools.

The biggest factor affecting school budgets is class size-- smaller classes means more teachers, and schools spend most of their money on teachers. So the obvious question is "how small is small enough." Obviously one-on-one tutoring with a teacher is the best way to learn, but there's a cost-benefit tradeoff we need to figure out.

Happily, there's bunches of research on class size and student achievement. There's a nice summary of the research at the US department of education website. From that summary:

A consensus of research indicates that class size reduction in the early grades leads to higher student achievement. Researchers are more cautious about the question of the positive effects of class size reduction in 4th through 12th grades. The significant effects of class size reduction on student achievement appear when class size is reduced to a point somewhere between 15 and 20 students, and continue to increase as class size approaches the situation of a 1-to-1 tutorial.

and:

...reducing class size is especially promising for disadvantaged and minority students.

There are 23 kids in Robin's kindergarten class... hmm. Not good. But there's a full-time teacher's aide helping out, so maybe that's like having half that number.... except that there's a study that showed that teacher's aides don't help student achievement.

Reading through the 2007 Amherst Regional Schools Budget Guide, I see (on page 10) that average class sizes for the high school are between 20 and 23 students. Since the research shows that class size definitely matters in grades K through 3, and since it also shows that there's little difference between a 20-student class and a 30 student class, maybe we're not spending our money wisely.

There's probably politics I'm not aware of (and probably other barriers-- like lack of classrooms in our elementary schools), but it seems to me we should increase class sizes at higher grade levels, and spend the money saved to pay for more K-3 teachers.

Mostly...

I'm mostly a libertarian.

I used to be mostly a Democrat, but I've become both more cynical and more optimistic as I've grown older.

I'm cynical about the ability of Government to solve our problems. Most of the really big problems (wars, genocides, environmental destruction) are either the direct or indirect result of government.

I'm optimistic about people, though. Most people are good, and most of the really good things that happen in this world are the result of good people doing great things (how cool is penicillin? Or the Nature Conservancy? Or Wikipedia?).

I'm also optimistic about our future. Soothsayers have been predicting worldwide doom for thousands of years, but overall things are getting better all the time. We know more than our parents did, and learn from their mistakes, and we're getting better at remembering and learning and sharing.