North by Northwestern

This. This this this this this.

The football programs may not be worth the decaying frost-covered post-industrial arctic hellscapes* that its universities are dotted across but damn if the B1G isn’t leading the pack into the future of college athletics.**

Evaluating the Educational Impact of the National School Lunch Program

My absence from Eleanor Ave. for the last couple months can be explained in one word: thesis. Although, technically, it is a “professional paper,” calling it a thesis avoids lots of additional explanation.  No matter what you call it, they both involve lots of words and lots of time.

Because my EA postings ceased as a result of this large collection of words, I decided that I should post the final document. 

Brief summary:  The National School Lunch Program (commonly referred to as “free/reduced lunch") provides millions of meals to low income school children every day.   The students eligible for free and reduced lunches achieve at almost one standard deviation below their peers on math and reading test scores.  In this paper I ask: do low income children receive any cognitive benefits from receiving a free or low cost meal at school?    In previous research, the answer has been “no, not really, except for select demographics on certain tests.”  Many results even indicated that participation led to lower test scores.  What these researchers did not consider is if, without out the NSLP, eligible students would receive a meal anyway – from their parents, a sibling, a neighbor, or a food shelf.  For this reason, my paper looks at low income children who also have “low food security” – essentially an index of hunger.  For these children, participation in the NSLP free lunch program appears to lead to positive, statistically significant improvements in tests scores, but particularly reading scores.  However, there remain some null and negative results which are likely attributable to the nature of the survey questions.  Additionally, the paper provides recommendations for policymakers and future research on this topic.

For more details about these topics, the history of the program, and methods/models for evaluating the NSLP, check out the full paper.

Special thanks to my advisers, the Humphrey School, and the many others that helped with the editing, support, and encouragement that made this paper possible.

Reaction Paper 2*

*This essay was written for my PubPol 754 class (hence the lousy title). It has been slightly modified for posting on the blog (or at the Michigan Daily**, “the Blog”) The ideas – save for one grammatical correction – remain my own, but the message has become even more salient in light of the Regents’ decision earlier this week to file an amicus curie brief supporting the overturn of a recently passed Michigan law banning grad student unionization. Universities file court briefs occasionally, but near as I (or anyone I spoke with) can tell, the governing body of any university taking a such strong stance on a strictly partisan procedural issue is unprecedented.

**Ignoring AP style since 1890. Also, meta alert: footnote within a footnote!

The most recent chapter in the saga of unionization at Michigan began last May when UM regents, against the advice of top university officials, voted to give Graduate Student Research Assistants (GSRAs) the option to join the umbrella union for teaching assistants and other student employees. While this was a rare schism between the administration and BoR, it is a startling one. Not only did the board grossly overstep its authority, but vote tallies and quotes show that GSRA unionization was a strictly political question for the regents, with both sides toeing party lines and giving no indication that they had seriously considered how unionization would affect the university. As a partisan body (right now there are 6 Democrats and 2 Republicans), it makes sense for members act and vote in accordance with party dogma. The million dollar question is whether or not that makes sense for the university, its faculty, and its students.

State of the unions

There comes a point in every debate where both parties become wrong; it’s part of what makes American politics great, or at least entertaining. Even Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus* and saw Atlanta burn during the Civil War.** Like William Sherman, Lincoln’s firebug general, the University of Michigan’s “Students Against GSRA Unionization” and their allies began to march stubbornly in that familiar direction Wednesday when the State Senate passed a bill to define Graduate Student Research Assistants as students – and therefore unable to unionize – for all posterity. SB 971 now moves on to the House of Representatives and we safely enter that all-to-typical political territory where both sides of an issue sides start making missteps.

Students Becoming More Than College Rankings

Last week, the Vice President and Dean of Admissions at Claremont McKenna College announced that he had falsified SAT data submitted to college ranking organizations.  Ouch.  How would it feel to be a recently admitted CMC* and find out that your SAT scores weren’t good enough to send in to US News and World Reports?

*I am just going to assume that this is their abbreviation…because up until this scandal, I had never heard of CMC.  I guess that is an upside of this: people around the country now know about the school.

 In addition to their lack of confidence, CMC also has an integrity problem.  Having a lying director of admissions encouraging students to apply does not exactly scream “come here and you will graduate with integrity.”  However, there’s a broader problem, too.

Your Hometown

So I was one of the four thousand or so people who was lucky enough to see President Barack Obama speak at the University of Michigan January 27^th. My apologies for getting this post up late, but there are two things I want to comment on that I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Notes on "The State of the Union"

While we were watching President Obama’s state of the union address Tuesday, a couple passages jumped out at us. Here they are, along with our thoughts (please hold your applause until the end):