Published June 14, 2010
Photos tagged boston and pride and shot this weekend, from Flickr:
Monthly Archives: June 2010
One More
Published June 14, 2010
Pierce, Garnett (AP)
Kobe made them earn it last night.
The Herald says Doc Rivers (“Nostradamus of the hardwood”) called it again. He predicted Kobe Bryant (38 points) would have one monster game in the series. WBUR called it a Bryant barrage. Shaughnessy points out that according to history, when the series is tied 2-2, the winner of Game 5 takes the championship 76 percent of the time.
Now it’s back to LA. Has Jack written his script yet?
Video: What'd You Think Of Game 4?
Published June 11, 2010
Boston’s Glen Davis and Nate Robinson are the indisputable (if not slightly slobbery) stars of Thursday night’s Game 4, as the two bench players stepped up to pull the Celts to a 96-89 victory over the Lakers. With the NBA Finals tied at 2-2, Bostonians are hopeful, if not a little anxious, about the rest of the series.
Hubbub interns Talia Ralph and Jeff Carpenter hit the streets to ask what Celts fans thought about the remarkable game and what it means for Boston’s chances in the series.
A Second Look At Third Grade Reading
Published June 11, 2010
Yesterday I called it a “gloomy” statistic: that 43 percent of Massachusetts third graders don’t read at the third-grade level. It was the lead in the Globe article and the premise of a conversation on Radio Boston. To quote President George W. Bush, “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
But is that statistic so gloomy? Consider this e-mail I got last night from Bill Dubay, who helped me report my piece yesterday:
One last remark about the 43 percent reading below the third grade level in the third grade.
I don’t think that should be cause for alarm unless that percentage is different in other schools. It stands to reason that since in the third grade the average grade level is the 3rd grade level, half the class might be reading below that level and half above it.
Reading statistics are very tricky and easy to use to alarm people. Many people are often shocked with the results of the adult literacy surveys and blame the schools. As I said on the phone, these figures have been very stable and do show real improvement over time, even in the inner cities. The teachers are doing a remarkable job, especially considering the cuts in school budgets.
There is a really good book for journalists who cover education:
Gerald W. Bracey, “Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered.”
There are other good books on reading statistics and research on Amazon.
To be fair, I’ll pose Dubay’s point to the researchers of that study. I don’t think anyone disagrees we should be striving to improve third grade education. The study offers constructive ideas for doing so. But maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves?
Your Boston Weekend: June 11-13
Published June 11, 2010
Take your dog for a cruise in Boston Harbor this weekend (Courtesy of City Water Taxi)
With so much going on in Boston every weekend, how does the culture lover choose, or even find, the best of what Beantown has to offer? Let Hubbub do some of the sleuthing for you.
Boston’s Pride Week turns 40, the sailboats get some fierce competition on the Charles, and the Harbor Islands open their arms (and grassy expanses) to man’s best friend. Whether you want to be in the streets or on the water, there’s something for everyone.
Hubbub Explainer: What's 3rd Grade Reading Level?
Published June 10, 2010
One of these kids will probably graduate high school on time. The other may not. Can you guess which one will succeed?
http://audio.wbur.org/storage/2010/06/radioboston_0610_kids.mp3
These are third graders at John Tobin Elementary in Cambridge, recorded in a story last year by WBUR’s Monica Brady-Myerov. And, OK, we don’t know for sure what will happen to either of them. But the data show, time and again, that a third grader’s reading skills are the best indicator of how he or she will perform in high school.
Third grade is a critical year. “When they leave third grade, there is a major shift — from learning to read, to reading to learn,” said Jaime Frost, a literacy coach, in Monica’s story.
A new study (PDF), commissioned by Boston nonprofit Strategies for Children and conducted by Harvard researchers, put a gloomy statistic in the spotlight: 43 percent of third graders in the state can’t read at the third-grade level. The numbers get even worse for minority students.
An 11-year-old reads. (Chris Gardner/AP)
Researchers started by examining MCAS scores for every kid in Massachusetts. I asked the lead author, Nonie Lesaux, how a standardized test could possibly gauge a kid’s reading skills. Basically, she says, a student reads a passage and then has to answer questions about that passage.
If you’re not a proficient reader, Lesaux says: “You will have missed something. You won’t have picked up a certain amount of nuance. You won’t have made an inference that you were supposed to make. You might not have understood some figurative language that was in there, which hinders your ability to answer that question.
“You might just not have read it fast enough, so that you had the leftover energy to devote to making sense of it. The one thing is, if your reading is too slow, then you can’t remember what you read from the beginning to the end.”
Lesaux says three-quarters of children who fail the MCAS in third grade will struggle throughout their academic career.
But writing a test to be understood by the “average” third grader is really tricky. Millions of dollars and a lot of research goes into writing clear, culture-neutral, readable tests and textbooks.
How Is Readable Defined? What’s A “Third-Grade Reading Level?”
What We're Working On: Thursday
Published June 10, 2010
- Meghna Chakrabarti is booking the researcher who found nearly half of Massachusetts third graders can’t read at a third-grade level. I am reporting a sidebar that seeks to explain what “third-grade reading level” means.
- Ted Siefer is following a possible U.S. Senate vote to block EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions, which followed from a Supreme Court ruling on Massachusetts v. EPA.
- Mark Navin is producing a segment about the breakaway Anglican church in Amesbury.
- David Boeri is profiling the Bangladeshi valedictorian from Boston English High School.
- Bob Oakes and Lisa Tobin are attending the final graduation of Provincetown High School, which is closing.
- Jesse Logan is following a lockdown at a high school in Milton, a change in policy at Brockton Hospital’s ER after a woman with a sick infant was denied help, and a state education commissioner’s response to calls for preschool teachers to be better educated.
Remembering The Old Bebopper Of Boston
Published June 9, 2010
Boston’s NPR News Station wasn’t always. For a fleeting decade, Boston was an American jazz center, and Tony Cennamo was at the center of that center. Cennamo was a WBUR jazz announcer for 25 years, starting in the early 1970s, continuing, on nights, in the 1980s, when WBUR became an NPR station, and into the late 1990s.
Tony died Tuesday after a long illness. He was 76. His wife, Carine Kolb, wrote and sent us this obituary:
The Universal Passion Of World Cup Soccer
Published June 9, 2010
I was living in San Diego’s (very) Little Italy four years ago, when Italy prevailed over France in the World Cup and every person of Italian descent, myself included, went ballistic. Though I’m no soccer fanatic, I couldn’t help but revel in the joy of the day.
German fans showed their national colors against Argentina in the 2006 World Cup. (Curt Nickisch/WBUR)
That final game was played in Germany, where reporter and soccer football geek Curt Nickisch was on assignment. He had the good fortune of covering the Cup for Only A Game.
“It was the most fun I had in my life,” Curt told me. “Americans have this completely wrong impression about international soccer, hooligans and whatnot. It was a love fest. I hung out with Italian fans for hours before our two teams went at it. There was no animosity afterward, either.”
Germany might not have won gold, but Curt witnessed something extraordinary there: Germans coming together, perhaps for the first time in decades, in a moment of national pride. (He blogs about the World Cup’s “true trophy” today on his Web site.)
“I never bought a flag before. I don’t know why, but I never did it,” one man said to Curt at a biergarten in Munich. “And now you see a flag on every third or fourth car. It’s really nice to see. … It’s hard to explain in words. A lot of emotion in it.”
In a country once ruled by the Third Reich, nationalism was taboo. When Germany played Argentina in ’06, many Germans didn’t even know the words to their national anthem — the lyrics were published on the front page of Bild, the national tabloid.
“I’m a bit of a patriot myself,” Curt told me, “and it’s a treat to recognize that same quality — pride in your home — in so many other people from so many other places. The political and cultural undercurrents to the contests are just so much richer than a professional sporting event in the United States.”
He continued: “You have no idea how crazy the world is for this. The URINALS in Germany had little soccer nets in them with a ball swinging from the crossbar. I’ve never been anywhere or seen anything where there was such a passion so universally shared by so many people.”
Now the Cup moves to South Africa, another venue fraught with symbolism, and Curt will be watching. He joins Only A Game host Bill Littlefield on today’s Radio Boston for a World Cup preview, including where you can watch the games here in Boston.
So What's A Jake?
Published June 9, 2010
OK, so what’s a “jake?” I had never heard this word for firefighter until I moved to Boston, where the slang is regularly splashed on the Herald’s front pages.
I called my friend Grant Barrett, a respected slanguist and the co-host of public radio’s A Way With Words, for an explanation.
“That’s a big fat origin unknown,” he said, to my disappointment. He did pose a few possibilities: